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Content snapshot
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Violence
Some
The violence of slavery depicted with honest weight; some deaths; historical brutality referenced
Language
Barely any
Period-authentic mild language
Sexual Content
Barely any
Adult relationships; historical content with no explicit depiction
Substance Use
None
No substance use
Emotional Intensity
A lot
The trauma of having children taken; decades of separation and loss; the specific horror of what slavery did to families
What this book is about
Barbados, 1834. The day emancipation is declared, Rachel — a formerly enslaved woman on a sugar plantation — walks away from the field where she has worked her entire life. She has one purpose: to find the children who were taken from her. Crossing Barbados and then Trinidad, she searches for each of them in turn. Eleanor Shearer's debut novel follows Rachel across the Caribbean in the immediate aftermath of emancipation, a story of motherhood and determination written in clear, luminous prose against a history of extraordinary brutality.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
slavery and its violence depicted
a mother's search for stolen children
themes of generational loss and trauma
Reader Verification
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