Homegoing

Author:Yaa Gyasi
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group, 2016
Pages: 11 Discs 
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: The unforgettable New York Times best seller begins with the story of two half-sisters, separated by forces beyond their control: one sold into slavery, the other married to a British slaver. Written with tremendous sweep and power, Homegoing traces the generations of family who follow, as their destinies lead them through two continents and three hundred years of history, each life indeliably drawn, as the legacy of slavery is fully revealed in light of the present day.
            
Effia and Esi are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle’s dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast’s booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia’s descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.

Review: This book was a roller coaster. At times it moved so slowly I wondered how I was going to get through it. Then, it would pick up and be engrossing and gripping, and I'd feel absorbed into the story.

I would have preferred this be a series rather than a saga. As a series it may have been more satisfying. The author is a talented storyteller and could have expanded and delved deeper into some of the themes and characters. 

The narrator was fantastic.