"I am honoured, as I have been hearing about you for so many years," I said.

"That's quite a statement, considering the breadth of your travels."

The Queen gave a crisp smile, and I could see in her eyes the desire to end the conversation.

"I have arranged for you to receive a little gift from my library," she said.

"Thank you," I said. I wanted to tell the Queen of England how profoundly I wished for her country's leadership in ending the traffic of men, women and children. But an aide took my arm and guided me gently but unerringly a step or two away, allowing the Queen to address Wilberforce.

I now stood facing King George III. I curtsied. He nodded. I waited, as instructed, for the King of England to reach out his hand or to speak, but he did neither.

He nodded several times, and opened his mouth to speak. But then he turned his head slightly and his eyes opened wider. He did not appear to know what he had meant to say, or who I was, or where we were.

I gazed calmly at the large, round, reddish face and the glassy eyes of the man who presided over the greatest slaving nation in the world, and I understood that there would be no conversation between us. I was led away, but I was not troubled. For all I knew, the King could have been on the verge of one of his fits. I had read all about them. The Bank of England had even issued a coin, years earlier, to celebrate the King's return to sanity. I wondered what the people of my homeland would ask if they knew that I had met with the toubabu faama-the grand chief of England. Never in a million years would they believe that he suffered from an illness in his head and had chosen an African queen.

As I was leaving Buckingham Palace, the same aide who had shown me the guest book now pressed into my hand a leather-bound volume. The Queen of England had given me On Poetry: A Rhapsody by Jonathan Swift.

THE TESTIMONY IN PARLIAMENT and the visit to Buckingham Palace had drained me again. I sought quiet and solitude and my best comfort, literature. I was rereading Swift's book when John Clarkson tapped lightly on my door.

"There is somebody here who wishes to see you."

"But I am not dressed to see anybody this evening," I said.

"I do not think the lady is concerned with your attire. She reports that she has been waiting a long time to meet you."

And then I saw an African woman-a girl, really-step into my room. Cheeks smooth like ebony. No moons and no scarification, but she looked like somebody from my village of Bayo.

"I am sorry," I said, my mind turning. "I know I saw you today in the rain. I could not stop to greet you then."

"The rain did not bother me. What were a few hours of standing in line? Mama, I have been waiting for years."

She stepped forward and threw herself into me with such vigour that she nearly knocked me over. It was the embrace for which I had been praying for fifteen years. We rocked on our heels, and clung to each other. I couldn't speak, so I just kept squeezing until my muscles grew tired.

We parted enough to look into each other's eyes, but our hands remained locked.

MAY AND I DID NOT LEAVE each other for two full days. We slept in the same bed, ate at the same table, and walked hand in hand by the Thames. The mere sight of the woman made me want to keep on living. Her lips brushed my cheeks every hour. I wanted to live on and on so that I could see her, and soak up her beauty, and love my own flesh and blood just a while longer.

I had little need to tell her what had happened to me, as she had read reports of it in the newspapers. Over the hours and the days, I came to learn what had happened to her.

The Witherspoons had never changed her name from May, or hidden from her that she had been "adopted"-as they put it-in Shelburne, Nova Scotia. They claimed, however, that they had saved May after she was abandoned by an African woman.

But May had been old enough to remember our life together, and from the very start she had questioned the story. The Witherspoons had taken her from Shelburne to Boston and sailed promptly to England. They doted on her at first but grew impatient and then angry when she refused to stop asking where I had gone.

"I had a terrible will," she said, "and they did not appreciate the tantrums in which I screamed for my mother."

The Witherspoons kept May as a house servant. She was locked in her room at night. She was not allowed to walk about London on her own. She had been taught to read and write and serve tables and perform domestic tasks, all of which she had to do daily. She had never been called a slave. Nor had she been paid.

At the age of eleven, she asked to go free, and they refused. One night she wriggled out of her bedroom window, dropped into the street and ran until a black preacher swept her up in his arms and asked why she was fleeing barefoot. The preacher let her stay with him and his wife until he could find a family in his own congregation to take her in. The woman of the family washed houses and the father sold newspapers and they squeezed May into the room with their own two children. May worked with the woman, washing houses, for three years, until she was able to get work teaching at a school for the black poor in London.

"You learned to read and write," I said.

May said she remembered me scratching out words for her to practise. "I knew how much you loved words, Mama, and I wanted to love them too."

"What happened to the Witherspoons?" I asked.

They had come after May. But the family that had taken her in sought the help of an abolitionist named Granville Sharpe, and he had "fierce words" with the Witherspoons and reminded them that they had no right to detain a Negro who had liberated herself from their possession. He said that he would humiliate them in court if they persisted. The Witherspoons moved to Montreal to open a shipping business, and May remained in London.

The next day, May took me to the school where she taught. Reporters followed us all the way there, and watched for hours as I spent the day with thirty African children who were learning to read and write. The conditions were crude and they had few resources, but May told me that it was much better than what others had. Many white children did not even attend school. When the papers wrote about my visit, I began to be asked every week to speak in a school, library or church. I addressed black people and I addressed whites. I would speak about my life to anyone who cared to listen. The more people who knew about it, the more would press for abolition.

WHEN THE CHILLS RETURNED TO MY FLESH, nobody in London had Peruvian bark. The fevers nearly swept me away, but May tended to me in my illness for months. Soup and bread, soup and bread, soup and bread, rice and a bit of mutton, when I was able to hold it down. I looked more and more like a skeleton. But I had a reason to live, so once more I clawed my way back to health.

May and I moved into lodgings paid for by the abolitionists. They rented two pleasant rooms for us at the rate of fifteen pounds a year, and hired a cook to make our meals.

In 1805, John Clarkson paid a visit to our new home, bringing me a new map of Africa. The cause of abolition was advancing steadily, he said, and the committee was endlessly grateful for my work.

"Is there anything at all that you need?" he asked.

I asked May to let us have a moment alone.

"You won't have to feed me much longer," I told Clarkson, "but I ask you to take care of my daughter." I secured his promise that the abolitionists would support May until she reached the age of twenty-five and see that she received any additional education that she wanted.

"She is an eminently capable young woman, and we will do our best to put her on a solid footing in life," Clarkson said.

"Good," I said.

"I hope that's my last contest with you," he said, "because you're some negotiator."

I smiled. "It's in my blood."

WHEN I URGED THE ABOLITIONISTS to donate to May's school, they complied. When we set up once-a-week church meals for the black poor, they gave food. But as they prepared to pounce with a motion in Parliament, they would consider only the slave trade.

"One step at a time," John Clarkson told me.

"Hop with two steps," I said. "Children do it. So can you."

May's school expanded to include forty and eventually fifty students. It did so well, and received so many materials and donations from the abolitionists that some white students began to attend as well. May renamed it the Aminata Academy, and I became known as the school's grand djeli. Every student in the school knew that the word meant storyteller, and each one looked forward to my Friday morning tales. I always began the same way. Unrolling a map of the world, I would put one finger on a dot I had drawn to represent my village of Bayo, put another finger on London and say: "I was born there, and we are here now, and I'm going to tell you all about what happened in between."

I AM FINALLY DONE. MY STORY IS TOLD. My daughter sleeps in the room next to mine. At first, I objected to being left alone at night. But May softly tells me that she has a man in her life now, and that they are planning to have a baby. Get yourself a good midwife, I say, because my hands tend to shake these days. And she says, Don't you worry, Mama, all that will be done.

May tells me that she has found a publisher for my story. But the abolitionists have their own publisher and insist on correcting "allegations that cannot be proved" and she doesn't know whether to give in or to use the man she has chosen. Does your man know the story of our people? I ask. Yes, May says. Then look him in the eye and see if he's a good man, I say. She has done that, she says, and she knows he's a good man-the publisher is her fiance. But, she says, the abolitionists claim that they have earned the right to publish my story. I stamp my foot. It hurts. The fevers are back and my bones burn. Next time, if there is a next time, I will put my foot down gently. I tell my daughter, in a voice that even I can barely hear, to thank the abolitionists for their food and shelter, and for the contributions to May's school, because without education our children's hopes are drowned, but that my story is my story and it will be published by the one who lets my words stand.

"This man who is going to marry you," I say. "When do I get to meet him?"

"You've met him, Mama, but you keep forgetting."

Write to my friend Debra in Freetown, I tell May. Tell her to come. Tell her to put Caroline in your school. May tells me that maybe Debra should stay in Sierra Leone, that maybe Sierra Leone needs her. Write to Debra anyway, I say, and pass on my love.

I would like to draw a map of the places I have lived. I would put Bayo on the map, and trace in red my long path to the sea. Blue lines would show the ocean voyages. Cartouches would decorate the margins. There would be no elephants for want of towns, but rather paintings of guineas made from the gold mines of Africa, a woman balancing fruit on her head, another with blue pouches for medicine, a child reading, and the green hills of Sierra Leone, land of my arrivals and embarkations.

They bring me the newspapers as well as tea with honey, because I don't get out any more. I seem to be napping so much of the time, and can't keep track of the days. May says she has news about the publisher and a cartographer. They will work together, she says, and include a map with my memoir. May and her new man are dressing up to go and hear William Wilberforce make his motion in Parliament. They say he is going to win this time. He'd better. I have helped him all I can.

May kisses me on the forehead and is gone. The girl has young legs and moves like a cyclone. I, with bones afire, have no more tolerance for walking. I will cross no bridges and board no ships, but stay here on solid land and take my tea with honey and lie back on this bed of straw. It is not such a bad bed. I have known worse. They can wake me with the news, when they come home.

The end.

A word about history.

THE BOOK OF NEGROES IS A WORK OF MY IMAGINATION, but it does reflect my understanding of the Black Loyalists and their history.

In terms of the sheer number of people recorded and described, the actual Book of Negroes is the largest single document about black people in North America up until the end of the eighteenth century. It contains the names and details of 3,000 black men, women and children, who, after serving or living behind British lines during the American Revolutionary War, sailed from New York City to various British colonies. Although a few went to England, Germany and Quebec, most of the people whose names appear in the book landed in Nova Scotia and settled in the areas of Birchtown, Shelburne, Port Mouton, Annapolis Royal, Digby, Weymouth, Preston, Halifax, Sydney and other places. It should be noted that some Loyalists sailed from South Carolina, and many are likely to have escaped by other means to the British colonies, away from the prying eyes of the inspectors registering names in the Book of Negroes.

In this novel, some of the excerpts from the Book of Negroes are real, and others have been invented or altered. Readers who wish to see the Book of Negroes can find it, or parts of it, in the Nova Scotia Public Archives, the National Archives of the United States and in the National Archives (Public Records Office) in Kew, England. It can also be found on microfilm at the National Archives of Canada and, through an electronic link provided by Library and Archives Canada, at: http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/200/301/ic/can_digital_collections/blackloyalists/index.htm. As well, the Book of Negroes is reproduced in The Black Loyalist Directory: African Americans in Exile After the American Revolution, edited and with an introduction by Graham Russell Hodges, Garland Publishing Inc., 1996.

Some 3,000 Black Loyalists arrived in Nova Scotia in 1783, and about 1,200 of them gave up on Nova Scotia after ten years of miserable treatment in the British colony. From the shores of Halifax, they formed the first major "back to Africa" exodus in the history of the Americas, sailing to found the colony of Freetown in Sierra Leone. To this day, the Black Loyalists of Nova Scotia are still known as some of the founders of the modern state of Sierra Leone. Like my protagonist Aminata Diallo, some of the Nova Scotian "adventurers," as they were known, were born in Africa. Their return en masse to the mother continent in 1792 took place decades before former American slaves founded Liberia, and more than one hundred years before Marcus Garvey of Jamaica became famous for urging blacks in the Americas to move "back" to Africa.

Readers might like to know that in 1807, the British Parliament passed legislation to abolish the slave trade the following year. In the United States, abolition of the slave trade also took effect in 1808. It was not until August 1, 1834, that slavery itself was finally abolished in Canada and in the rest of the British Empire. Another thirty-one years passed before the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution officially abolished slavery in the USA in 1865.

Though this work is built on the foundations of history, in some instances I have knowingly bent facts to suit the purposes of the novel. I will cite four key examples. First, my protagonist Aminata Diallo is paid by the British government to record the names of thousands of blacks into the Book of Negroes in New York City in 1783. My understanding is that the British did not hire private scribes for the Book of Negroes, but simply used officers from within their ranks. Second, Canada's first race riot-in which disbanded white soldiers took out their frustrations on the blacks of Birchtown and Shelburne, Nova Scotia-actually took place in 1783, but I have set it in 1787. Third, Thomas Peters-the Loyalist who helped set the exodus from Halifax to Freetown in motion by travelling to England to complain about the ill treatment of blacks in Nova Scotia- travelled to Sierra Leone and died soon after his arrival, but not at the hands of slave traders, as happens in this novel. And finally, although the British Navy lieutenant John Clarkson organized the exodus from Halifax to Sierra Leone and sailed to Freetown with the black "adventurers," he did not stay in Africa as long as I have him there.

John Clarkson and Thomas Peters are two of a number of fictional characters who are drawn from real people having the same names. Others are Clarkson's brother Thomas Clarkson; the slave-ship surgeon and subsequent abolitionist Alexander Falconbridge; his wife Anna Maria Falconbridge; King George III and his wife Queen Charlotte Sophia of MecklenbergStrelitz; Nova Scotia governor John Wentworth and his wife Frances Wentworth; as well as Sam Fraunces, the tavern owner who fed George Washington and other patriots and went to work as a cook for the president after the Revolutionary War.

Moses Lindo was a Sephardic Jew from London, England who arrived in South Carolina in 1756. In Charles Town, Lindo became a member of the Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim-one of the oldest Jewish congregations in the United States. Eventually, Lindo became the official indigo inspector for the Province of South Carolina. For this novel, I have borrowed Lindo's last name and his interest in indigo, but everything else about my fictional character Solomon Lindo is invented. In the case of Solomon Lindo and all other characters in The Book of Negroes, I have taken complete liberties, creating imaginary dialogue, actions, events and circumstances.

For further reading.

FOR READERS WHO WISH TO KNOW MORE about the history behind The Book of Negroes, I will mention some of the books that I came across in my research. (Other titles are noted in my acknowledgments.) Novelists may forever be trying to make sense of the transatlantic slave trade, but in my view a good way to begin to appreciate its impact on ordinary people is by reading the memoirs of freedom seekers. As the editor of The Classic Slave Narratives, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., assembled four key slave narratives, including memoirs by Frederick Douglass, Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs and Mary Prince.

First-hand accounts reflecting the experiences of the Black Loyalists of Nova Scotia can be found in George Elliott Clarke's Fire on the Water: An Anthology of Black Nova Scotian Writing, Vol. 1, which contains memoirs by David George, Boston King and John Marrant, among others.

Europeans have left accounts of their experiences with the Black Loyalists, travels in West Africa or participation in the slave trade in the eighteenth century. I am especially indebted to John Clarkson, whose personal journal documenting his work in organizing the exodus of the Black Loyalists from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone in 1792 was ably introduced and edited by Charles Bruce Fergusson in Clarkson's Mission to America, 17911792. Also indispensable were An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa by the slave-ship surgeon Alexander Falconbridge and the letters written by his wife Anna Maria Falconbridge in Narrative of Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone During the Years 179117921793. These two accounts can be found independently in libraries or joined together in one book with the same titles, introduced and footnoted by historian Christopher Fyfe. I relied on The Journal of a Slave Trader (John Newton), 17501754; With Newton's Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade, edited by Bernard Martin and Mark Spurrell; and on Journal of a Slave-Dealer: A View of Some Remarkable Axcedents in the Life of Nics. Owen on the Coast of Africa and America from the Year 1746 to the Year 1757, edited by Eveline Martin. The historian Alexander Peter Kup edited the diary by the Swedish botanist Adam Afzelius: Sierra Leone Journals, 179596. Dr. Thomas Winterbottom provides many details in his two-volume An Account of the Native Africans in the Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone. Finally, in Travels in the Interior of Africa, the Scottish doctor Mungo Park describes his trip from Gambia through what are now Senegal and Mali in the years 17951797.

I found many books about the people of Africa. Some of the books about Sierra Leone were A History of Sierra Leone by Christopher Fyfe and A History of Sierra Leone, 14001787 by Alexander Peter Kup. To learn more about Mali, I consulted Groupes ethniques au mali by Bokar N'Diaye; The Heart of the Ngoni: Heroes of the African Kingdom of Segu by Harold Courlander with Ousmae Sako; and The Bamana Empire by the Niger: Kingdom, Jihad and Colonization 17121920 by Sundiata D. Djata.

There are many books about the transatlantic slave trade. Most helpful for my purposes were Black Cargoes: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 15181865 by Daniel P. Mannix and Malcolm Cowley; Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 17351785 by David Hancock; and The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 14401870 by Hugh Thomas.

For old maps of Africa, I studied the Historical Atlas of Africa by J. F. Ade Ajayi and Michael Crowder; Blaeu's The Grand Atlas of the 17th Century World by John Goss; and Norwich's Maps of Africa: An Illustrated and Annotated Carto-bibliography, revised and edited by Jeffrey C. Stone.

For information about slave vessels and life on board eighteenth-century ships, I looked carefully at Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail by Stephen R. Bown; Slave Ships and Slaving compiled by George Francis Dow; The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy by N. A. M. Rodger; and in The Journal for Maritime Research, Jane Webster's article "Looking for the Material Culture of the Middle Passage."

A number of books introduced me to the history of South Carolina- particularly the history of black people in Sea Islands and in Charleston (or Charles Town, as it was spelled before the American Revolution). Some were: Slave Badges and the Slave-Hire System in Charleston, South Carolina, 17831865 by Harlan Greene, Harry S. Hutchins, Jr., and Brian E. Hutchins; Charleston in the Age of the Pinckneys by George C. Rogers, Jr.; and A Short History of Charleston by Robert N. Rosen.

The literature on the history of South Carolina is vast, but some books of great help to me were Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Low Country by Philip Morgan and Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect by Lorenzo Dow Turner. I also read Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 177582 by Elizabeth A. Fenn; Masters, Slaves, and Subjects: The Culture of Power in the South Carolina Low Country, 17401790 by Robert Olwell; and Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion by Peter Woods. Other helpful books were Reminiscences of Sea Island Heritage: Legacy of Freedmen on St. Helena Island by Ronald Daise; Gullah Fuh Ooonuh (Gullah For You): A Guide to the Gullah Language by Virginia Mixson Geraty; and The Gullah People and Their African Heritage by William S. Pollitzer.

I also came across articles and books about slave hair and clothing. Shane White and Graham White wrote Stylin': African American Expressive Culture from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit, as well as the article "Slave Hair and African American Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," which appeared in the Journal of Southern History. In the Journal of American History, Jonathan Prude wrote "To Look upon the 'Lower Sort': Runaway Ads and the Appearance of Unfree Laborers in America, 17501800."

I drew additional information about South Carolina history and details about indigo from South Carolina: A History by Walter Edgar; The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina, Volume 1, 15141861 by Lawrence S. Rowland, Alexander Moore and George C. Rogers, Jr.; and the booklet "Indigo in America" produced by BASF Wyandotte Corporation.

Two books offered herbal remedies and details about the care of pregnant women in the South: Hoodoo Medicine: Gullah Herbal Remedies by Faith Mitchell and Southern Folk Medicine 17501820 by Kay K. Moss.

Various books describe Jews in South Carolina in the eighteenth century. Among others, I relied on This Happy Land: The Jews of Colonial and Antebellum Charleston by James William Hagy; The Jews of South Carolina Prior to 1800 by Cyrus Adler Huhner; and A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life edited by Theodore Rosengarten and Dale Rosengarten.

For details about New York City in the eighteenth century, I consulted New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan by Jill Lepore; The Epic of New York City by Edward Robb Ellis; The Battle for New York: The City at the Heart of the American Revolution by Barnet Schecter; Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace; The Loyal Blacks by Ellen Gibson Wilson; and Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 17701810 by Shane White. To learn about the African Burial Ground in Manhattan, I read "Historic Background of the African Burial Ground," a chapter in the Draft Management Recommendations for the African Burial Ground, produced by the United States National Park Service.

As for the lives of the Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia, I read King's Bounty: A History of Early Shelburne, Nova Scotia, by Marion Robertson; The Life of Boston King: Black Loyalist, Minister and Master Carpenter edited by Ruth Holmes Whitehead and Carmelita A. M. Robertson and the Nova Scotia Museum curatorial report "The Shelburne Black Loyalists: A Short Bibliography of All Blacks Emigrating to Shelburne County, Nova Scotia after the American Revolution, 1783," by Ruth Holmes Whitehead.

To learn about the abolitionist movement in Britain and to imagine the lives of blacks in London at the turn of the nineteenth century, I consulted Hogarth's Blacks: Images of Blacks in Eighteenth-Century English Art by David Dabydeen; Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain by Peter Fryer; Black England: Life Before Emancipation by Gretchen Gerzina; Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves by Adam Hoshschild; and Reconstructing the Black Past: Blacks in Britain, 17801830 by Norma Myers.

I could never have written The Book of Negroes without the work of all the diarists, memoir writers and historians who went before me, but I alone am responsible for any intentional or accidental deviations from history in this novel.

Acknowledgments.

I CAN'T BEGIN TO ACKNOWLEDGE ALL OF THE PEOPLE-some living, and others who wrote diaries, travel accounts and slave narratives more than two hundred years ago-on whose shoulders I climbed to write The Book of Negroes. But I do wish to thank the people, books and institutions that helped me the most.

I came across the idea for The Book of Negroes while reading a book that I had stolen, so I will begin by acknowledging what I took and where I found it. The book was The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 17831870, and the author was James W. St. G. Walker, a history professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. I took it from the Toronto home of my parents, Donna Hill and Daniel G. Hill. Dad scribbled his name inside the front cover before I went out the door, but it did him no good, because that was twenty years ago and I still have the book.

Dr. Walker was a good friend to my father and mother-they all wrote books about the history of blacks in Canada-and later he became a friend and steady adviser to me, as well. He answered numerous questions as I researched The Book of Negroes, introduced me to other scholars and commented on an early draft.

Out of respect for Dr. Walker and all of the other scholars who advised me, I must emphasize that any historical inaccuracies in this novel-intentional or otherwise-are my responsibility and mine only.

Paul E. Lovejoy, Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of History at York University and author of Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa and many other books, shared with me some of his scholarly articles dealing with scarification, enslavement and Muslims in West Africa. Dr. Lovejoy commented on scenes set in Africa, suggested other books and articles, and provided details about British parliamentary hearings into the abolition of the slave trade.

Valentin Vydrine, author of the MandingEnglish Dictionary and head of the African Department, St. Petersburg Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, answered many questions to do with languages and ethnic groups in the West African country now known as Mali.

Gordon Laco, a ship expert who acts as a consultant to filmmakers, was kind enough to offer advice for the novel, as was my friend Chris Ralph, who has spent years working on ships performing scientific missions.

Nicholas Butler, Special Collections Manager of the Charleston County Public Library, suggested and helped me find many books and articles about colonial Charleston. Dr. Butler took the trouble to send me a good dozen letters, assisting-and correcting-me on matters such as identification tags worn by slaves, travel by small craft in the low-country waterways, the Gullah language, coin usage, slave clothing, slave auctions, street life and so forth. He must have answered one hundred questions, and every one patiently and kindly.

I wish to acknowledge assistance from the Penn Center on St. Helena Island. Located on the site of one of the first schools for freed American slaves, the Penn Center is a museum and cultural centre exploring the history and culture of Gullah people in the Sea Islands. Staff at the Penn Centre introduced me to the video Family Across the Sea produced by South Carolina ET V, which documents the connection between the Gullah people and their ancestors in Sierra Leone.

Throughout revisions of the novel, I was lucky to have a steady stream of advice, encouragement and corrections from Ruth Holmes Whitehead, Curator Emerita of the Nova Scotia Museum, and Co-curator of its virtual exhibit Remembering Black Loyalists, Black Communities in Nova Scotia. Dr. Whitehead has spent the past ten years researching a forthcoming book on the Black Loyalists of South Carolina.

Cassandra Pybus, Australian Research Council Professor of History at the University of Sydney and author of Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty, answered my questions about blacks in Manhattan in the eighteenth century and led me to scholarly articles.