Speak Right On: Dred Scott, a Novel

Neighbour's thoughtful but inert debut novel, a fictionalized biography of Dred Scott, depicts the slave whose suit for freedom was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1857, a legal and political decision that nullified the Missouri Compromise and helped spark the Civil War. The novel's plodding treatment of Scott's life spans his birth into slavery in 1799 to his death as a free man in 1858 (he was bought and released by a former owner, not the courts), covering Scott's servitude to Peter Blow and then Dr. John Emerson. Scott works as a jockey, cotton picker and valet for the relatively benevolent Blow family before financial troubles compel them to sell him to "Doc Master," an army surgeon he ably assists at various frontier posts. Neighbour imagines Scott as a small, quick-witted, storytelling man who speaks in wise aphorisms: "When I think on running, it ain't 'cause I see myself as a slave—it's 'cause I see myself as a man." Scott and his wife, Harriet, petition Emerson's widow (née Sanford), for freedom. Denied, the Scotts use the "once free, always free" doctrine (Scott lived in free states with Emerson) to launch his famous court battle, a legal dispute Neighbour treats with conscientious detail. (Feb.)