The Slave Dancer

ISBN 10 : 0881035394 ISBN 13 : 9780881035391

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An Excerpt from The Slave Dancer

        I heard one piercing scream. My teeth began to chatter.

        Then a very small brown face rose above the rail as though it had flown
        up from the sea. It continued to rise slowly until its brown bare chest
        was visible. Then I saw dark hands around its waist. The hands lifted,
        the little girl's legs flew out, and I saw the head of the young man who
        had been carrying her.

        For a second, she sat on the deck, looking all around her, her eyes huge
        with amazement, then she crawled and jumped toward the rail but was forced
        back by the forward propulsion of the man who tottered over the rail,
        unable, it seemed, to bring his body any further. The child hugged the
        young man's neck frantically and buried her face in his hair. At that
        moment, Nicholas Spark bent his thin length and gripped the man's back
        as though he were gathering up cloth, and yanked him altogether over,
        the chains around his ankles striking the deck with a violent clanging.
        The clanging never ceased as one after another the captives struggled
        over the rail and were dropped or dragged onto the deck. How long did
        it all take? I'll never know. None of us moved.

        
From the Trade Paperback edition.

Présentation de l'éditeur

"Take up the pipe, Claudius," a voice growled near Jessie's bound head. "He's worth nothing without his pipe!"

Snatched from the docks of New Orleans, thirteen-year-old Jessie is thrown aboard a slave ship where he must play his fife so that captured slaves will "dance," to keep their muscles strong and their bodies profitable for their owners' use.

Jessie is sickened as he witnesses the horrible practices of the slave trade. But even those horrors can't compare to the one final event awaiting Jessie's witness. Can the cruelty to his fellow human beings be stopped? And will it be too late when it finally does stop?

In a stunning performance by Peter MacNicol, Paula Fox's enduring classic comes magnificently alive, with the seating truth about a period of American history we would otherwise most likely wish to forget.

Détails de l'édition

• ISBN 10: 0881035394
• ISBN 13: 9780881035391
• Reliure: Cahier
• Langue: anglais