June Dey, Norman, and Gbessa eventually find themselves united in Liberia as the fledgling nation is being wracked by incursions from French slave traders and tensions between black American settlers and African natives. Cast out from her village, she becomes anathema to everyone but Safua, a little boy who promises to help her. The reputation isn't entirely unearned: Gbessa has abilities that allow her to return from the dead. Across the Atlantic, in a West African village called Lai, a little girl named Gbessa is born on a day that the village elders have proclaimed cursed as a result, she garners a reputation as a witch. Nanni eventually gives birth to Aragon's son, a boy named Norman who possesses abilities similar to his mother's. Nanni soon saves Aragon's life with the help of a peculiar ability: She can become invisible under certain circumstances. Meanwhile, a white British scholar named Callum Aragon arrives in Jamaica to study Maroon communities and forces the Maroon slave Nanni to assist him. He boards a ship for New York only to find himself headed for Liberia. Her son, June Dey, flees from the plantation and soon discovers he has superhuman strength. When a Virginia slave named Charlotte dies while trying to protect a fellow slave, her death sets in motion a series of supernatural events that changes the tiny West African nation's history. The slight puncture where the bullet would have made its permanent hole quickly healed in their sight, and the helper dropped the gun and ran away from them like a bullied child.An ambitious, genre-hopping, continent-spanning novel that uses the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade as the backdrop for a magical realist adventure.įollowing four characters from far-flung corners of the African diaspora, debut novelist Moore tells the story of Liberia's formation in the mid-19th century. They expected that it would kill him on impact, expected that this would be his end and the boy would go from them as mysteriously as he had come.īut the bullet, as if repelled by his skin, fell to the ground. The bullet soared toward June Dey and Darlene. The maids screamed at the sight of the gun and the helper immediately fired it. Embarrassed and pale with trepidation, he lifted his gun from his belt. While beating him, the helper with the other whip looked down at his trousers as his bladder weakened and poured onto his clothes and shoes. Each time they whipped him, he became more infuriated and they sensed it in him. Instead, each time he was struck his strength grew. “The whips fell onto June Dey’s chest now, but as on his back, his skin did not break.

She would be king by wayétu moore