Preserving Ancestry

Mtumé grows up in a small village in Eastern Senegambia in the early 1800s, learning to become the village shaman from his mother. Those dreams are dashed when Portuguese slavers invade the camp, killing many of the villagers and securing the rest for the trek through the jungle to a slave ship waiting at Gorée Island. Along the trail, Mtumé uses his ingenuity and knowledge of herbal remedies to keep his fellow-villagers safe and garner privileges from his captors.

Once the slave ship carrying Mtumé reaches New Orleans, he is sold to the Whitney Plantation, where he teaches his offspring how to use nature's bounty to ward off illnesses. Decades later, his descendant, Chantel Maxie, is the Director of the Infectious Disease Center at LSU. When a pandemic strikes, wiping out much of the world's population, Chantel must reach Mtumé's ancient village to find the special herb for the cure. She connects with her ancestor in a psilocybin-induced trance to learn of the cure's ingredients. While on Interpol's Wanted list for espionage and bandits pursuing her for her knowledge, Chantel must trek through a remote jungle to find a rare plant while fighting off the virus ravaging her body.

This book honors the Whitney Plantation, a 200-acre former plantation which operated from 1752 to 1975 producing indigo, sugar, and rice as its principal cash crops. The historic site is dedicated to telling the history of slavery in the United States from the perspective of the enslaved Africans, African-Americans, and Creoles of Color who built America's wealth.