A powerful story of slavery and survival . . .
'To know things, for us to know things, is bad for them. We get to wanting and when we get to wanting it's bad for them.
They thinks we want what they got . . . That's why they don't want us reading.'
Sarny, a twelve year old slave girl at the Waller plantation, first sees Nightjohn shackled and naked, his body riddled with scars. A new field hand with a thirst for knowledge and freedom, he risks everything to teach Sarny and the others to read. In this brutal world of cruelty and human misery, the price they have to pay is a high one.
'Nightjohn exposes with shocking force the horrors of slavery in America's 1850s.