Dec 22, 2009
Rutherford Calhoun, the novel’s first-person narrator. Calhoun, a well-educated and pleasure- seeking slave, is manumitted at the age of twenty-one. Angered by his brother’s refusal of their master’s wealth, Calhoun leaves rural Illinois for New Orleans, where he survives on charm, thievery, and lies. When Boston schoolteacher Isadora Bailey, aided by black underworld king Papa Zeringue, attempts to force Calhoun into marriage, he stows away on the Republic, a slave ship about to sail to Africa. His shipmates are divided into many factions, and...
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