Amari is a fifteen year old African girl living during the time of slavery. Her life seems all set out in front of her. She's got a great family, great friends, and her tribe is welcoming, as always. Everything changes for her, all at once. That is the day that she is kidnapped by the white men. She is forced into tiny prison cells, until she, and several other kidnapped Africans, are final shipped out to America, destined for a life of slavery. She is sold at an auction to the highest bidder, a man who is giving her to his son as a birthday present. Amari is terrified as she is thrust into this whole new world so quickly, so suddenly. As she goes to live on the plantation, she must indure physical and emotional tortures such as having to stand by and watch a murder happen before her very eyes, Clay, the man's son, and being expected to take in everything and keep quiet about it. Simulatainiously, Polly is an indentured servant, bound to the same family as Amari by an indenture that she is trying to work off. Her parents have both died of smallpox, and she has nowhere left to go. She is there at the auction for Amari, and sees and feels nothing but disgust for her, seeing to as how she thinks that slaves steal all of indetured servants' work. As time at the plantation goes by, however, she begins to take a liking to Amari, and the two gradually begin to become friends. But they also both share something in common: unhappiness with the family that they are serving. Escape seems to pop up a lot to thier minds, but they avoid it, even though it seems almost inevitable. But escape hardly ever succeeds, especially without help. There's so much to gain from it, but so much to lose, also.
The conflict in this book is mostly external, but also slightly internal for the two girls. It is external for Amari because she has to deal with all of the horrors that comes with being a slave, which brings up a person vs. society conflict, because she is a slave, and there is nothing that she can do to make the law on her side, no one to help her, and no one coming to save her. She has to find her own means of making it stop. As far as internal conflicts go, Amari has to emotionally deal with being treated like an animal. For Polly, she is basically in the same shoes as Amari, except for the fact that she is white and has slightly more rights. It seems dark and hopeless for both of them.
The theme in this book is slavery. You can tell this from the obvious plotline and from my description. In my opinion, it is sort of similar to an extremely shorter version of Roots. This is because there are other main charaters and friends of Amari, but the story mainly focuses on her. The tone is mostly a bright tone, but also serious, like one that you would see in a text book.
I was in a book club for this book along with two other friends last year. We had chosen this book out of a variety of different ones involving historical fiction. I had high expectations for this book, and all of them were fulfilled, although the book had quite a few sexual referances. However, I don't mind this, as they were pretty vital to this story. Besides those, I thought that the story was quite good. I think that the author gave you plenty of time to care about the characters instead of just jumping into the story immediately, which I think is pretty important to do. Thanks for reading. Tune in later!
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