Slavery has ended, but her journey has only just begun
by Deborah Johnson
Mar 13, 2023
3 minutes
In Eleanor Shearer’s eloquent debut novel, “River Sing Me Home,” Rachel, along with the other enslaved people on Providence Plantation in Barbados, has just heard the joyous news that they are now free. Except they’re not. While the British parliament has passed the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, they must continue to work six more years as unpaid “apprentices” before their freedom takes legal effect.
Still, this hint of freedom, this promise, is enough to fire the
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