Related Tags

A riveting historical novel based on one of the nation's first civil right struggles
-- Often left out of history books, the events that inspired this novel spanned three years and involved three court cases

The year is 1839, the place Western Africa and New Haven, Connecticut. Fifty-three Africans who are taken as slaves struggle against terrible odds to regain their freedom and return home to Africa. They are led by Singbe Pieh, a humble rice farmer who refuses to be a slave and never gives up his quest to return home to his wife and children.

This historical novel begins as Singbe is capture by rival tribesmen. He is quickly sold to white slave traders, tortured, and humiliated on board a slave ship and again in the Havana slave market Soon he finds himself transferred to the Amistad, where he stages a bloody rebellion. Eventually he and his fellow rebels end up off the coast of Long Island where the U.S. Navy intervenes, towing the Amistad to Connecticut, where slavery is still legal.

Led by President Van Buren, the pro-slavery U.S. government tries to return the Amistad to the slave owners and Cuban shores. But members of the fledgling abolitionist movement, led by equal rights zealot Lewis Tappan and defense lawyer Roger Baldwin, force a series of court trials aimed at freeing them. What follows is a scheme to kidnap the Amistads using U.S. Marines, a government cover-up, and the case making its way to the U.S. Supreme Court where former President John Quincy Adams argues on behalf of the Amistads. David Pesci converts this harrowing story into a page-turning novel.

"A wonderful book, powerfully written and filled with emotion.... This is a story that transcends race orethnic origin. It is a story of hope in the face of impossible odds and of the will to be free". -- Roberta Flack [via]