I took the plunge last week and signed up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) 2020. My goal is to finish revising the first draft of my novel, Destiny Reclaimed (working title). With the help of my astute, compassionate, and generous critique group, I have already made considerable progress, and have learned a lot about the craft of writing. In the words of the old commercial, I have come a long way (Anybody remember Virginia Slims?). Now I want to complete the process so I can enlist Beta readers and consider querying.

This seemed a good time to revisit why I wanted to write this story. I have noodled a germ of the idea since the mid-eighties when I began piecing together fragments of information about my African ancestry. Knowledge begot questions: where did my forbearers begin on that vast continent, what was the journey like to this one, what was their situation once they arrived, who diluted their blood? Those questions led to inquiries into the triangular Atlantic slave trade and the “peculiar institution” of slavery.

Family historians on my mother’s side began researching in the sixties and unearthed some excellent “bread crumbs,” which led us to discover a branch of the family in Canada. After the Dred Scott decision in 1856, an ancestor escaped his Maryland plantation and took his chances with the underground railroad. He made it across the border and established himself in Ontario. We knew nothing about him or his descendants until 1984. We now hold family reunions every other year, alternating US and Canadian hosts. I have long planned to write about his daring move, and will after I complete Destiny. Last year I wrote a creative non-fiction short story/essay about it, which I may post here in the coming weeks. But the longer piece is still in the hopper.

We know much less about my father’s side of the family. My discoveries show they began in Virginia—at least, I have found no trace of them (yet) in any other locality. There is credible evidence of links to the Lees, the family that raised two men who signed the Declaration of Independence and included the Confederate General Robert E.

My research impressed on me how deeply Africans influenced life in the New World. Popular media often focus on the enslaved’s submission to cruelty perpetrated by owners, including rape and other abuse of females. The picture conveyed puts little emphasis on their cultural and physical contributions, heroism, and resistance. I wonder, for example, how many know that the first person killed in the Revolutionary War was of African and Native American ethnicity and that many African Americans fought for the cause. Most people recognize the names of Nat, Sojourner, and Harriet. But they were exceptional. I want to shed light on the millions more ordinary men, and especially women, who stood their ground in their own way. I like to think my ancestors were such people. I want to tell their story.

The intricate politics of the revolutionary period in the colonies also garners scant attention in our national understanding. Circumstances required the men in charge to decide questions of enormous consequence for their fledgling experiment and for the world. They were creating a destiny into which future generations would live.

As I researched the three legs of the slave trade—Europe, Africa, the Americas—I learned more about the fascinating kingdom of Dahomey. It was a land of contradictions and cultivation. To my knowledge, schools in the US teach little about this or any African culture other than the Egyptian. (I admit I’m making a sweeping statement, and I hope readers will educate me if they aware of exceptions to it. I’m confident the situation will change in the future as the society focuses more on the causes of systemic racism.)

That is a long-winded way of explaining why I wanted to write about the questions engrossing me. I preferred to explore them via fiction. Novel seemed to be the most appropriate form, historical fiction, the genre.

Based on those inquiries—history overlooked or marginalized relating to the culture of Dahomey, choices available to England’s colonies in the New World, heroism of enslaved women, intermingling of cultures, co-development of the new republic—I posed several “what ifs”. I honed in on the mid- to late- eighteenth century because it was the height of the slave trade. Revolution was brewing in the English colonies and options were still open. Portugal, Holland, England, and Denmark were fighting for prominence in Africa against the growing tide of objection to the slave trade.

Add to that mixture the tantalizing possibility that fate played a hand in my marriage to a Dutchman, and …..

Destiny Reclaimed is a tale of personal growth and understanding unfolding against the backdrop of the highly developed culture of Dahomey, the business of the Atlantic slave trade, and plantation realities of eighteenth century Tidewater Virginia. It observes with brutal honesty as its heroine discovers the meaning of fate, freedom, greed, and missed opportunity. She is the enslaved female whose story is neglected in movies, the one who rebuffed abuse and stood firm facing tyranny.