In 2006, over beer and wine at a convention of historians, a group of us discussed an award-winning book about a family and the enslaved people they held.  A highly regarded historian of slavery suddenly blurted out, “But, where’s the blood?”  

            She was right.  Where was the blood?  We all knew about the bloody oppression of slavery, of course, but the book had charmed us so that we hadn’t noticed the lack of “blood” in the stories.  The blood of injuries working in the fields, mucking out the canals, of childbirth, and, of course, the blood of violence.  In the book, there was very little sense of the everyday violence and threats of punishments that underlay the power of slave holders.  

            Ever since, whenever writing about slavery, I’ve asked her question, “Where’s the blood?”  

            Telling about the blood, sweat, and tears of slavery is often difficult, but it is a lie to do otherwise.  Slavery as a system requires terror, violence, coercion, and manipulation to work.  More importantly, those who were enslaved had to live within this violent system and do their best to navigate a treacherous world.  I brought this sensibility into my novel, The Slaver’s Apprentice.  

            The world of slavery was a complicated and confusing universe.  As Frederick Douglas pointed out, each plantation was its own kingdom, ruled by a wise, uncaring, or even mad king.  Enslaved people worked out ways to survive in this dangerous situation, only to have it all upended by sale or the death of an owner.  Worldly, educated men in Africa could find themselves chained in the hold of ships headed for the Americas.  The very randomness of fate hovered over the lives of the enslaved, shaping their culture and beliefs.  I tried to capture some of this with the character of Gymbe in The Slaver’s Apprentice, a polymath deeply familiar with the workings of the Atlantic World.  

            Of course, all of this was based on my long experience as a historian of slavery and emancipation, and the legal world they inhabited.  This, I hope, will come through in the book, The Slaver’s Apprentice, due out in October, 2026.