Summary and Reviews of River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer

River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer

River Sing Me Home

by Eleanor Shearer
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  • First Published:
  • Jan 31, 2023, 336 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Aug 2023, 352 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

Rare. Moving. Powerful. This beautiful, page-turning and redemptive story of a mother's gripping journey across the Caribbean to find her stolen children in the aftermath of slavery is a remarkable debut.

The Good Morning America Book Club Pick for February 2023.

Her search begins with an ending.…

The master of the Providence plantation in Barbados gathers his slaves and announces the king has decreed an end to slavery. As of the following day, the Emancipation Act of 1834 will come into effect. The cries of joy fall silent when he announces that they are no longer his slaves; they are now his apprentices. No one can leave. They must work for him for another six years. Freedom is just another name for the life they have always lived. So Rachel runs.

Away from Providence, she begins a desperate search to find her children—the five who survived birth and were sold. Are any of them still alive? Rachel has to know. The grueling, dangerous journey takes her from Barbados then, by river, deep into the forest of British Guiana and finally across the sea to Trinidad. She is driven on by the certainty that a mother cannot be truly free without knowing what has become of her children, even if the answer is more than she can bear. These are the stories of Mary Grace, Micah, Thomas Augustus, Cherry Jane and Mercy. But above all this is the story of Rachel and the extraordinary lengths to which a mother will go to find her children...and her freedom.

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Reviews

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The descriptions of people and places are compelling. Like the film director Alfred Hitchcock, the author is a genius, providing just enough description and then letting your imagination fill in details to complete the imagery. This technique can make an event more emotional and compelling than if the author used five more paragraphs of description (Mary S). River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer is inspired by the true stories of the brave women who went looking for their stolen children after the abolition of slavery in 1834. I love reading historical fiction, respect history and I'm grateful to have learned about this time in the past (Cindy R)...continued

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Beyond the Book



The Abolition of Slavery in the Caribbean

Photograph of Emancipation Statue in Barbados, showing figure with broken chains dangling from wrists The Slavery Abolition Act, also known as the Emancipation Act, was an act of Parliament that legally abolished slavery in most British colonies. The act received Royal Assent on August 28, 1833, and took effect the following year on August 1. In Eleanor Shearer's debut novel, River Sing Me Home, this event serves as a catalyst for the plot, which follows Rachel, a previously enslaved woman in Barbados, on a journey she undertakes after abolition to find her five children who were sold away from her.

The main aim of the act was to dismantle the plantation system in the Caribbean. The evolving international economy had rendered the sugar production industry in the region less efficient and profitable in recent years. There was also ...

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