African Town

The year is 1860 and though the transatlantic slave trade has been banned for more than 50 years, the enslavement of Black men and women still fuels the American economy. But Southern planters now face the threat of a civil war as the end of slavery in the United States looms. Plantation owner, Timothy Maher can’t conceive of such a disruption to his way of life. He resents government interference in his right to make a living. Against this backdrop, he makes a bet: that he can smuggle enslaved Africans into the United States without being caught. His fellow gentleman farmers take that bet and soon Maher has commissioned what is now known as the last slave ship, the Clotilda. Wrenched from their homes in what is modern-day Benin, the Clotilda carries 110 African captives to an uncertain fate. Among these souls are five vibrant young men and women whose dreams are just starting to take flight: Abile, Gumpa, Kehounco, Kossola, Kupollee. They survive the Middle Passage and arrive in Alabama to start new lives as enslaved people, still clinging to a dim hope of one day returning home. But first, there is more to survive in America—cruelty, dehumanization, brutality, and a civil war. Through it all they hold fast to each other, they marry, they raise children, they make a way and they make a home in each other as they at last let go of that dim hope of ever returning to African shores. They refashion themselves at every turn and when they are finally free they refashion themselves yet again forming a legacy that still endures in African Town, the community they built together to live out their lives post-enslavement. Inspired by the true story of the survivors of the last American slave ship, African Town is a powerful portrait of finding strength, joy and dignity in unimaginable pain and unforgivable acts. A novel-in-verse told in fourteen distinct voices this unforgettable, daring novel chronicles a pivotal, can’t miss moment in American history.