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The title gives our ending away. The book is the journey we make to arrive. Our journey starts in Africa with a young child, and her upbringing within a unique family. Atende learns the skills of her parents who serve as the Obeahmen and N'ganga of their tribe, the Shaman, but she also evidences behavioral traits that hint at some darker, something different, that lies deeper within. Captured and debased she is brought to Savannah to be sold as a slave. It is only the strength of her upbringing and her attitude to life that enables her to survive and, eventually, flourish. Her escape, where she risks all to free the cruelly treated slaves on the neighboring plantation leads to an unlikely alliance with the local Indian tribes and ignites the hope of freedom. Atende's escape causes her old mistress, the Methodist Emma Stannard, to question her views on slavery. Her soul-searching leads to her championing the cause of abolition and with the help of Savannah's Methodists and many others she leads the churches of America to condemn the barbaric practice. It is a story of of death, cruelty, adventure, love and war that impacts across a period of rapid change in the fledgling United States. The United States was making giant strides towards forming a nation. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was under construction in the new capital of Washington, Thomas Jefferson held the Presidency, Lewis and Clark were travelling east to west from "sea to shining sea" and the United States was involved in its first act as an international player fighting the Barbary pirates on the "Shores of Tripoli." The British outlawed slavery in 1803, the slaves of Haiti overthrew their French masters, the south was in the midst of a religious revival and the Native Indians were becoming more united in recognizing the continuing threat of the white man. Prologue: "She was a pretty girl. No, she was a very pretty girl with high cheekbones; glowing dark skin; wide eyes; all promising a very attractive woman in the future. She was only a child but lacked the innocence of youth. When she was five, her mother gave her a monkey. It has strayed from its mother and had come into the village. Like little girls do she petted it, groomed it and fed it. She did not give it a name. Later she cut off its paws and watched its short life end in a painful death."
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