The Captive

The carefree existence of narrator Kofi, the 12-year-old son of a West African Ashanti chief, is shattered when the family's slave sells him to a slave trader in 1788. Recaptured after a brief escape, Kofi ends up in chains on a slaver bound for Boston. After a harrowing journey, during which most of the captives--children all--and much of the crew die, Kofi and his ailing friend Joseph are included in the bargain when Master Browne buys an English cabin boy's contract for indentured servitude. Taken to Salem, Kofi learns to speak English (and to read, until Browne stops his wife's teaching). The three boys labor from before dawn till after dark six days a week, enduring their Puritan master's floggings and torturous hours of prayer. They run away during the election celebrations, when the ``white men who have money and property vote for a new government to tax them and tell them what to do.'' Pursued by Browne, they are taken in by Paul Cuffe, a historical African American Quaker sea captain, who argues successfully in court for the release of the two slaves to his care. Hansen's ( The Gift-Giver ; Home Boy ) thoughtfully researched and eye-opening story offers a deeply moving, Afrocentric perspective on the brutal inequities of American life in the nation's earliest, perhaps most idealistic years--and now. Ages 10-up. (Jan.)