excerpt chapter one
In bondage, even in his mother’s womb, he never had more than one choice. Traders aboard the Prospect sold the fourteen-year-old to a sugar planter on the island that would become Haiti. Then, seizures made him fall to the ground; his muscles jerked out of control and he proved him unfit to cut sugar cane in the searing sun. A year later, when the sailing vessel returned to the island, the planter sold the spoiled merchandise back to Captain Vesey.
The boy believed his life to be better, as Captain Vesey clothed him, and the crew named him Denmark. They played with him affectionately as if he were a pet, eyed him up and down, and speculated about his beauty and intelligence. He went silent one day as spits of rain covered the deck and shipmen passed him, one to another, laughing.
From the Indies to West Africa, Denmark stared into the freedom of the Atlantic. With the sun at his back, he consumed the port languages. On days when fog dressed the sky and a vile stench shrouded the ship, Denmark busied himself tidying the captain’s cabin, polishing instruments and maps repeatedly and storing them; anything to keep him away from the hold below. His chore in the hold—shaving the heads of young captives—made him a bystander to flogging, branding, and raping of naked, trembling cargo. It reminded Denmark that he was just an unchained slave. Every time he saw seamen hurl diseased and dead merchandise over the side to feed trailing sharks, he swallowed his screams and retched.
excerpt chapter thirty-seven
Ten days after the ocean opened its bowels and spewed angry dissent that ended President Tolbert’s life, an aftershock came. A forceful wind blew across the sea to the shore. The sea retched forward and hurled generations of pent-up frustration and revenge, like living projectiles that pierced their way into every corridor, street, home, and mind.
Thirteen men endured humiliation and beatings, and after summary trials, they were found guilty. Guilty of one hundred thirty-three years of settler class greed, of stealing humanity, and ending hope; guilty of looking outside for solutions to Liberia’s problems; guilty of passing down the same indignities onto indigenous men and women that they had learned in slavery; guilty of deferring dreams.
Thirteen fathers, husbands, sons, and uncles seen by some as distinguished, having the highest degrees; seen by others as traitors, guilty of committing the highest crimes.
The sky changed to stormy black as the men were stripped, marched publicly, and tied to electrical poles. Their wrists were wrenched behind their backs and around the poles with wire; their ankles bound by rope. Soldiers took their good time—five minutes—to open fire and spend four hundred rounds into thirteen enemies of the people.
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