The Slave Era

Much of the book's early chapters, in each narrative line (the American, the African), are set in what might be summed up as the slave era - specifically, the early 1700's through the mid-1800's. This was the period in which black Africans by the thousands were taken from their homes traded as chattel or possessions by both blacks and whites, and sold into slavery into America and Europe. The end of the slave era came in the mid-late 1800's, at least in part as a result of the American Civil War which was fought in no small part because of differences of opinion between the North and South over the slave trade.

Africa

One of the book's main narrative lines is set almost entirely in the continent of Africa, and more specifically within several of its tribal communities, or villages. At the beginning of the...