A review by librarysue
Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill

5.0

Wow! A near-perfect pandemic read that fell into my hands when I had both time on my hands and an acute awareness of the racial unrest that has come to a head in the U.S. in this past year. Don't know how I missed this when it came out in 2007 but I'm glad I I found it now! This is vividly written historical fiction about the 18th C. slave trade, seen through the eyes of a compelling female character named Aminata Diallo, kidnapped from her west African village and transported on a slave ship to 'Charles Town' in South Carolina. The author is the mixed-race son of Canadian civil rights activists who has certainly done his research. The tale features little known (to U.S. citizens) events such as the efforts of the British to evacuate "loyalist blacks" to Canada after the American revolution, and the settling of Freetown, Sierra Leone by Nova Scotian Blacks some 10 years later. A most compelling novel that is hard to put down! (And now I discover that that a TV mini-series was made in 2015 called "The Book of Negroes" -- which was the title of the book in its Canadian release. Time to look THAT up too!)