Novel
Road to Freedom
Yema Lucilda Hunter · 1982
Synopsis
In 1791, in Birchtown, Nova Scotia, the family of young Deanie, thirteen, who tells the story, joins the Black settlers who are leaving to found a free town in Africa. Guided by Thomas Peters, they cross the Atlantic and take part in the birth of Freetown, where they face the hostility of neighbouring peoples, the rains, lack of money, the quarrels of the colony's government and a British protection less secure than they had been promised.
Context
The novel appeared in 1982 in Ibadan, from African Universities Press; it was its author's first. A librarian, she drew on the accounts and stories of the founding of the colony to portray the tensions between English settlers, settlers from Nova Scotia and the peoples of the country, and followed the history of a single family down to about 1817. The book was reissued in 2016 under the title Seeking Freedom.
Who it is for
In English, more than two hundred pages; a historical novel told in the first person by a child.
Prizes and reception
Praised for its historical accuracy, it is regarded by Sierra Leonean critics as its author's major work.
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