(River sing Me Home):The overseer of the Providence plantation in Barbados assembles his enslaved individuals and informs them that the king has issued a decree terminating slavery. Starting from the next day, the Emancipation Act of 1834 will take effect. Their jubilant cries turn to silence as he declares that they are no longer regarded as his slaves; instead, they are now designated as his apprentices. Leaving is not an option; they are obligated to labor for him for an additional six years. The concept of freedom merely seems like a continuation of the life they’ve always known. This prompts Rachel to flee.
Departing from Providence, she initiates a desperate quest to locate her children—the five who managed to survive birth but were sold. Are any of them still alive? Rachel needs answers. Her arduous and perilous journey transports her from Barbados, then via river into the depths of the British Guiana forest, and finally across the sea to Trinidad. The impetus behind her journey is the unshakable belief that a mother cannot truly attain freedom without discovering the fate of her children, even if the truth is more painful than she can bear. These narratives encompass Mary Grace, Micah, Thomas Augustus, Cherry Jane, and Mercy. Yet, at its core, the narrative centers around Rachel and the extraordinary measures a mother will undertake to reunite with her children and secure her own liberty. (River Sing Me Home)
Eleanor Shearer is a mixed-race writer and the granddaughter of Windrush generation immigrants. She splits her time between London and Ramsgate on the English coast so that she never has to go too long without seeing the sea. For her Master’s degree in Politics at the University of Oxford, Eleanor studied the legacy of slavery and the case for reparations, and her fieldwork in St. Lucia and Barbados helped inspire her first novel.
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