River Sing Me Home
A powerful, uplifting novel of a remarkable journey to find family, inspired by true events
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3.7 • 6 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Inspired by extraordinary true events, River Sing Me Home is a soaring story of courage and sacrifice, and a testament to the remarkable tenacity of hope.
- Soon to be adapted as a feature film by AL Films and BBC Film.
- Prima magazine's Books of the Year 2023.
- A Good Morning America Book Club Pick.
'Every once in a while, a book comes along that is so assured and so powerful you can't believe it's a debut.... Eleanor Shearer brings this story of a mother's courage to the page with compassion and tenderness' Natasha Lester, New York Times bestselling author
'I was riveted by Rachel's story. Like the River of its title, this novel sings. Beautiful' Cherie Jones, author of How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, shortlisted for The Women's Prize for Fiction
'A searing debut full of love and loss... Heartbreaking, hopeful, and unforgettable... this is the kind of book that will stay with readers for years to come' Kristin Harmel, New York Times bestselling author
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Rachel is searching for her children. For Mary Grace, Micah, Thomas Augustus, Cherry Jane and Mercy. These are the five who were sold to other plantations; the faces she cannot forget. It is 1834, and the law says her people are now free. But for Rachel freedom means finding her children.
With fear snapping at her heels, Rachel keeps moving. From sunrise to sunset, through the cane fields of Barbados to the forests of British Guiana, then on to Trinidad, up the dangerous river and to the open sea. Only once she knows their stories can she rest. Only then can she finally find home...
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'A top contender for my book of the year. I beg you to read it' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Real reader review
'Powerful . . . certainly my best read of the year' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Real reader review
'An astounding debut' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Real reader review
'One of the most incredibly moving books I have ever read that will stay with me for a long time' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Real reader review
'Incredibly moving' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Real reader review
'I adored this novel' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Real reader review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A woman travels the Caribbean in search of her children after she's escaped from slavery in Shearer's lyrical and deeply evocative debut. In 1834 Barbados, Rachel, 40, listens as her sugarcane plantation owner announces slavery has ended but that all the workers are legally bound to the plantation for another six years as apprentices ("six years of cutting and planting and cutting again. Freedom was just another name for the life they had always lived," Shearer writes). Rachel runs away, desperate to learn the fate of her five surviving children who were sold into slavery. Former tobacco harvesters living on an abandoned plantation help Rachel to Bridgetown, where she is reunited with her mute daughter, Mary Grace. The two travel with a seaman named Nobody and an Akawaio Indian orphan named Nuno, chasing leads on her son Micah in the aftermath of an uprising in British Guiana. Tension mounts with a canoe trip up a crocodile-infested river, which leads them to her son Thomas Augustus and an encampment of runaway slaves. In Trinidad, Rachel finds her daughter Cherry Jane, a radiant beauty with upper-class pretensions and an invented identity as "the daughter of prominent free mulattoes." Rachel finds her last surviving child, Mercy, pregnant and being whipped on a Trinidad plantation. In scenes of vivid horror, stirring resilience, and moving reconciliation, Shearer shows the cruel effects of slavery and its aftermath. The beautifully written depiction of a mother longing for her children makes this transcendent.
