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Congo Jack

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Early 19th century: A Black man is sold by Muslims to white slave traders in Nigeria who then survives the middle passage and is sold to the British Army on the Caribbean island of Dominica. Having forever lost his Nigerian tribe,this man, Congo Jack, fully adopts the values of his "new tribe"-- the British military system and the regiment he belongs to, whose perquisites place him above the common Black field slaves of the island. In fact he and his Black soldier-comrades do not see themeselves as slaves at all: they perceive themeslves as pure British privates. This presumption is put to the test when his all-black regiment mutinies in spearheading a revolution in loose conjunction with the contemporaneous one in Haiti. Congo Jack is faced with making decisions that define his self-identity and destiny-- proud, loyal British soldier or mutineering,revolutionary Black slave? The author masterfully presents several characterss using well developed powers of speech, imagery and narration to move those around them to think or not think, act or not act, sometimes rightly, somtimes wrongly in this riveting episode of historical fiction. A moving story on several plains.