A Book by any Other Name

Let's go for a bike ride and exercise our owner!
Warren St., Charleston, SC

Photo unrelated to entry. Get used to it.

My sister Barbara In Kingston, Ontario sent me a book that I set aside and didn't read. When my brother Bob from Dunnville, Ontario sent the same book to me for my birthday I figured I'd better read it.

It was a terrific book, the story of a bright young girl who was kidnapped in Africa during the slave trade. Her mother had been a midwife and she had some skills that helped her along her journey. I soon figured out why my siblings had sent it to me from Canada. The heroine of the book begins her life in America where most slaves did, on Sullivan's Island. She was sold to an owner who operated an Indigo Plantation and then to a Jewish man who lived in Charleston. Many of the names in the book are common lowcountry names today.

I'd never heard of the book before.

Here is why. The name of this book which has won numerous awards in Canada is The Book of Negroes.

I used The Book of Negroes as the title for my novel, in Canada, because it derives from a historical document of the same name kept by British naval officers at the tail end of the American Revolutionary War. It documents the 3,000 blacks who had served the King in the war and were fleeing Manhattan for Canada in 1783. Unless you were in The Book of Negroes, you couldn't escape to Canada. My character, an African woman named Aminata Diallo whose story is based on this history, has to get into the book before she gets out.

I was completely unaware that over 3,000 freed slaves had been shipped to Nova Scotia.

Author Lawrence Hill was told that his book would not sell under it's original name in the US and the title was changed to Someone Knows My Name.

I've got two copies if anyone local wants a good read or order here. Thanks Barb! Thanks Bob.