River Sing Me Home


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 BERKLEY
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 Copyright © 2023 by Eleanor Shearer
 Readers Guide copyright © 2023 by Eleanor Shearer
 Published by arrangement with Headline Publishing Group Limited.
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 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
 Names: Shearer, Eleanor, author.
 Title: River sing me home / Eleanor Shearer.
 Description: New York: Berkley, [2023]
 Identifiers: LCCN 2022025625 (print) | LCCN 2022025626 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593548042 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593548059 (ebook)
 Subjects: LCSH: Slaves—Emancipation—Caribbean Area—Fiction. | Mother and child—Fiction. | Caribbean Area—History—19th century—Fiction. |
 LCGFT: Historical fiction. | Novels.
 Classification: LCC PR6119.H433 R58 2023 (print) | LCC PR6119.H433 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92—dc23/eng/20220621
 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022025625
 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022025626
 Headline Review UK hardcover edition / January 2023
 Berkley hardcover edition / January 2023
 Cover design and art by Jessica Cruickshank
 Map by Tim Peters
 Book design by Katy Riegel, adapted for ebook by Kelly Brennan
 This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 pid_prh_6.0_142389075_c0_r0
 
 
 For Mum, Dad, Cal and Jeanette
 
 
 
 
 My aim in writing this novel was to bring to life a story about the Caribbean in the aftermath of slavery—a place and time that is not always well-known or well understood. Doing this history justice was incredibly important to me, especially given my family ties to the Caribbean. To make this story as accurate as possible, I have chosen to use some terms—such as “mulatto” and “Negro”—that are offensive to many people today, myself included. There are also characters who express deeply racist views, which were widespread at the time. I do not use these terms or write these characters to condone them, but I want readers to be clear-eyed about the extent of the brutality and oppression that enslaved people faced. As we excavate history through fiction, we can confront the injustices of our past as a way to shed light on our present and work toward a more equitable future.
 Eleanor Shearer
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.
 Jeremiah 31:15
 Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.
 Derek Walcott, “The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory”
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The soil on the island was fertile, but everything laid down shallow roots. When the hurricanes came, they ripped up even the sturdiest trees; and when the white men came, they tore children out of their mothers’ arms. And so, we learned to live without hope. For us, loss was the only thing that was certain.
 Many of us had already lost one home. A home of deep roots and of ancestors delved down into history. Those roots did not save us. Those roots rotted in the hulls of the slave ships, in darkness and filth. We had little left to plant in the new world, and whatever we had was the white men’s for the taking. So we tried to live only on the island’s surface. We planted cane, but nothing of our own. Mothers turned their 
 
 
 
 BARBADOS
 AUGUST
 1834
 
 
 1
 
 
 
 
 It was the blackest part of the night and Rachel was running. Branches tore at her skin. Birds, screeching, took flight at the pounding of her strides. The ground was muddy and uneven, slick with the residue of recent rains, and she slipped, falling hard against the rough bark of a palm tree. She slid down to the soil, to where ants marched and beetles scurried and unseen worms burrowed through the earth. With ragged breaths she gulped the heavy, humid air into her lungs. She could taste its dampness on her tongue, tinged with the acidic bite of her own fear.
 What had she done?
 She looked behind her. Looming in the darkness was the outline of the mill on Providence plantation, its arms splayed out like four