Until the Day Arrives
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A fast-moving middle-grade novel set in the seventeenth century about two Portuguese orphans who are sent to Brazil where they encounter slaves from Africa. Together with their new friend, an aboriginal boy, they work towards reuniting the slaves with their families and helping them escape to freedom.
The novel opens when Bento is wrongly thrown into Lisbon’s prison by the king’s guards, leaving his younger sibling, Manu, to fend for himself. Fortunately, a nobleman’s family helps to reunite the siblings — although they will have to lead a life of exile in Brazil. They keep secret the fact that Manu is a girl in disguise so that she will be able to accompany her brother aboard ship.
The story shifts to the African savannah, where a young boy, Odjigi, is hunting gazelle with his father and other men. But the hunters soon become the hunted — they are kidnapped by slave traders, as are the women and children of the village, marched to the sea, shut up in dark, airless huts to prepare for the voyage across the Atlantic, and then undergo the horrifying trip itself.
In Brazil, the siblings quickly adapt to their new lives, but they are shocked by the existence and treatment of African slaves. Manu befriends an aboriginal boy, Caiubi, and a slave, Didi, who has been separated from his father. Meanwhile Bento falls in love with Rosa, a beautiful young slave who is also searching for her family. When Manu learns from Caiubi that escaped slaves have formed quilombos — villages hidden deep in the forest where they live in freedom — she is determined that they must help Didi and Rosa escape.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Machado's (From Another World) finely sketched characters and settings propel this historical novel, set in the early 17th century, which follows two orphaned siblings from Lisbon to colonial Brazil. After losing their family to the plague, the siblings end up in Lisbon, where older brother Bento gets imprisoned following a bar fight, forcing 11-year-old Manu to find him. Once they are reunited, Bento's arrest leads to his exile in Brazil, and the siblings embark on a harrowing journey. A deeply affecting parallel story line follows the capture of an entire African village, during which 11-year-old Odjiji and his family are forced onto a slave ship. Bento and Manu's arrival in Brazil is particularly powerful, as they realize that the beautiful, bustling docks are home to the ugliness of a brutal slave market. Interconnected relationships between the siblings and slaves highlight the cruelty and unfairness of the system, especially as Bento falls in love with a slave and Manu becomes dear friends with one. This brief but action-packed novel offers memorable insights into slavery, colonial life, and the promise of freedom. Ages 10 13.