COVER

DEDICATION

FOR MY MAAME, BARBARA ELAINE JOHNSON ALEXANDER, WHO TOLD THE BEST STORIES

EPIGRAPH

MY CHILDREN GLIDED ON THE GREAT RIVER

OVER THE DEPTHS OF DEATH…

THEN, ONE DAY, SILENCE…

—DAVID DIOP

MAP

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

This is historical fiction. It is a novel inspired by history, based on the real lives of the Asante (A·shan·ti) people, who are native to a region of West Africa now known as Ghana. It was a hard story to write, but it was one that needed to be told. I wrote it for the me nobody knows. For the you who is still becoming. For the possibility that is in us. The great poet, philosopher, and abolitionist Ralph Waldo Emerson said, Be an opener of doors. I’ve tried to be that here. Now you must walk through. With your eyes unshut. With your heart unlocked. And your mind as free as the mighty sea… Akwaaba!

ASANTE KINGDOM

SEPTEMBER 1860

CHAPTER ONE

THE STORY OF OFFIN

There was even a time… many seasons ago… when our people were the sole supplier of the purest and most valuable gold in the world… The river was bedded with enough gold to make a century of royal stools for the Asante kings… A thousand shiny bracelets for their wives… Then came the foreigners… Invaders disguised as friends… pretending to be students of our way… with only one lesson to learn… how to steal our fortunes… But we fought them off… protected our rich land, our river… the Offin River… It flows to the east, into the mighty Pra, which travels over one hundred and fifty miles down to the Coast, where it drains into a vast blue unknown that we call the Big Sea… On the rolling sides of Offin are deep forests and farmlands and villages and a boy of the same name… You see, on the morning of your birth, eleven years ago, your maame squatted at the edge of the water, and… Offin carried her fifth child on its shoulders at first breath… It is true, I was there, that you stopped crying as you floated off like a ship inching toward the horizon… The river Offin grabbed you with an invisible cord wrapped around each moment of your day… held you like a mother cradles a baby… pulled you like the moon does the earth… Ever since, you and the water have been bound… river and son, wave and flutter… That is how you got your name, my grandson…

THE STORYTELLER

There was even a time

is how my papa’s father,

Nana Mosi, the village storyteller,

begins most of his

fireside tales

always starting

in the middle

of a thought

like we were to know

what even came before

always speaking

in slow,

deliberate spurts

about the past

like it lives

in him,

like it still matters

always repeating some things

and pausing at other times,

with a toothy smile

that raises one eyebrow,