the new governor decided to send Quey to his mother's village—ostensibly to remind Abeeku Badu and his men of their trade obligations with his presence. His task was to convince Abeeku to stop trading with the Dutch and Portuguese and trade only with the British. He was also responsible for overseeing the shipment of slaves. He was thrown for a loop when he got a letter from Cudjo. When Quey didn't write back, Cudjo came to Quey's village to tell him he was married and invite him to visit. Shortly after this meeting, Quey's uncle Fiifi kidnapped Nana Yaa, the daughter of the great Asante chief Osei Bonsu. Fiifi was injured in the attack, but he didn't regret it. It was a power play, and it taught Quey an important lesson about being a slave trader. In the end, he decided never to visit Cudjo because doing so would make him look weak.

James Richard Collins

James was the son of Quey Collins and Nana Yaa, the daughter of Osei Bonsu, a great Asante chief. When Osei Bonsu died, James and Nana Yaa decided to attend the funeral despite his father Quey's protests. The Asantes knew that Nana Yaa was royalty, but that wouldn't save Quey from the angry villagers who knew Quey was involved in the slave trade. After days of traveling, the three of them stopped to visit Quey's old friend David, who got drunk and asked when James would marry. Without consulting James, Quey and Fiifi had already arranged for him to marry Amma, the daughter of Chief Abeeku's successor, when he turned eighteen. At Osei's funeral, however, James met a willful woman named Akosua, who refused to shake his hand because he was a slaver. She told him he would not earn her trust until he left his family and returned to the village to marry her. He married Amma but found he had no desire for her. For months, James pretended to be ill or impotent to avoid consummating their marriage. He then visited Mampanyin, an apothecary, who gave him permission to pursue his desire for Akosua. He traveled to Efutu, where he was attacked by a warrior. People assumed he was dead, and he let them think that so he could return to Akosua.

Abena Collins

Abena was born in a small Asante village, the daughter of Akosua and James Collins. She called her father Old Man, but everyone else in the village called him Unlucky because his crops always failed to grow. James occasionally sent Abena to neighboring villages to bring back new seeds, hoping this would make a difference. It never did. No one wanted to marry Abena, Unlucky's daughter. She had a long-term affair with Ohene Nyarko, a married man who agreed to take her on vacation to Kumasi so she could see more of the world. After visiting Kumasi, they returned to their village, and the bad years began. Everybody suffered from bad harvests, including Ohene. His promise to marry Abena after the next good harvest went unfilled. Eventually, Ohene went to Osu to procure cocoa beans for his farm. He had heard they would grow even when other plants died. The cocoa plants brought him a good enough harvest that he could have married Abena had he not promised to marry the daughter of the man who traded him the first cocoa beans. Abena left Ohene and went to Kumasi to live in a Christian church.

Akua Collins

Akua grew up in the missionary school after her mother Abena died in childbirth. For fifteen years, Akua lived in the school. The Missionary, a white man, insisted on giving her private lessons, often threatening her with a switch. She left the missionary school with her husband Asamoah, a warrior, and moved to the village of Edweso to live with his family. In Edweso, she witnessed a missionary being burned at the stake. That was when the nightmares started. A firewoman began haunting her dreams, signifying the fiery curse on her family. Akua was afraid to sleep. Exhaustion made it hard for her to concentrate, even while she was cooking with open flames. While Asamoah was off at war, Akua's mother-in-law locked her in her hut, placing Fat Man in front of the door so Akua couldn't escape. Asamoah returned from the war missing one leg. This only exacerbated Akua's insomnia. Soon she began sleepwalking. One night, she set fire to the hut. Asamoah was able to save her and their son, Yaw, but the other children perished in the fire. For this, the villagers called her Crazy Woman. She lived to a ripe old age, dying while her granddaughter Marjorie was in high school.

Yaw Agyekum

Yaw was the only child to survive the fire Akua started in her sleep. He was badly burned in the fire, and the villagers took him away from Akua and Asamoah for his own protection. He rarely saw his mother as a child, and as a young man he was sent to England to study. He returned to Africa to be a schoolteacher. On the first day of school, he wrote the phrase "History is Storytelling" on the board and asked the students to tell the story of his scar. After some initial shyness, they began telling the wild stories they had heard. Finally, one of them admitted that they had no way of knowing the truth. This was part of Yaw's lesson: that history is told by the ones with power, and that you must always look for the stories that aren't being told to truly understand the past. In the summer, Yaw decided to hire a house girl, Esther, a native of Takoradi, where he taught. It took them five years to admit they had feelings for each other. Together, they visited Yaw's mother, Akua, who told them the true story of the fire. Yaw had never heard her side of it before. He and his mother would stay in contact even after he moved his family to Alabama.

Marjorie Agyekum

Marjorie was born in Africa but raised in Alabama. In the summers, she flew back to Africa to visit her grandmother Akua, whom she called "Old Lady." Akua had moved from her village of Edweso to Cape Coast, where she was able to live in peace because no one called her Crazy Woman. Marjorie loved visiting her grandmother and cherished their summers together. In Alabama, the other African American kids teased her for not being "black" enough. When she did well in school, they called her "white girl" and taunted her at lunch. She found a friend in Graham, a white kid whose family had just moved to Alabama from Germany, where his father worked for the United States military. Marjorie and Graham soon began dating; they shared one kiss before a white girl convinced Graham not to be seen with Marjorie. Depressed, Marjorie refused to go to prom. She recited a poem at a cultural ceremony celebrating black culture. At the end of the school year, Old Lady died. Marjorie and her family traveled to Ghana for the funeral.

Esi's Descendants

Ness Stockham

Ness, the daughter of Esi and an unknown white man, likely a soldier or slave trader, was born into slavery. Ness was passed around between different masters before going to Thomas Allan Stockham's plantation in Alabama. By the time she arrived, her body was covered in scars from the whippings a former master gave her. TimTam, a fellow slave, took an interest in her. His daughter Pinky grew so attached to Ness after Ness nursed her through an illness that the two became inseparable. Then one night when Tom Stockham Jr. tried to whip Pinky for not speaking, Ness stopped him. TimTam was grateful, but Ness rebuffed his advances. She was haunted by her former life: her marriage to a man named Sam, a fellow slave who spoke a different language. That was back when Ness lived in Hell, a plantation so terrible that her master sometimes beat her for no reason. Ness and Sam began planning an escape so that their son, Kojo, would not grow up a slave. With the help of a woman named Aku, Ness and her family fled Hell. On the night the slave catchers found them, Ness asked Aku to take Kojo. Aku and the boy escaped, but Ness and Sam were taken back to Hell. Ness was beaten until her entire body was scarred. Sam was beheaded.

Kojo Freeman

Kojo was born into slavery, but a woman named Aku managed to bring him North after his parents, Ness and Sam, were captured during their escape attempt. Kojo was living in Baltimore, working on a ship called the Alice, when Southern politicians passed a new law stating that a runaway slave could be arrested even in the free states. Kojo was advised to take his family farther north—to New York, maybe, or Canada. He decided to stay, knowing that Ma Aku would never go to Canada. Then one day his pregnant wife, Anna, disappeared. Kojo looked everywhere, showing her picture to everyone he passed in the street; but he couldn't find her. Anna had been kidnapped by a white man and sold into slavery.

H Black

H was born into slavery after his mother, Anna, was kidnapped in Baltimore and sold to a plantation owner in Alabama. When the Civil War ended, H walked from Georgia to Alabama, where he was arrested for supposedly looking at a white woman the wrong way. As a prisoner, he was stripped of his rights (something made possible by the Thirteenth Amendment). The State of Alabama sold him to a mining company. He worked in the coal mines for years. In 1889, he was freed a year early in recognition of his hard work. He moved to Pratt City, a town made up of ex-cons. His friend Joecy helped him get a job at the mines there. Eventually, H joined the union and helped lead a strike in protest of the low wages and terrible working conditions. After six months, the owners of the mine agreed to increase wages by fifty cents. Meanwhile, H suffered from black lung and began coughing up black phlegm. H married his former girlfriend, Ethe, who arrived in Pratt City one day unannounced and moved into his house.

Willie Black

Willie was born in Pratt City, the daughter of H and Ethe. Willie was a born singer and often sang at her father's union meetings. It was there that she met Robert Clifton, a light-skinned black man who was so light that he would later pass as white in New York City. Robert and Willie moved to Harlem together and stayed with Joecy's son Joe, a schoolteacher. It took Willie three months to find work as a housekeeper. Later, she worked as a custodian at the Jazzing, a mediocre jazz club, where singers often performed racist skits for white people. One night, she had sex with Robert in front of two white men. Robert abandoned her and their son, Sonny, soon after. To support her family, Willie took odd jobs here and there. Eventually, she joined a church, seeking forgiveness. That's where she met Eli, a free-spirited poet. After the birth of their daughter, Josephine, Eli began wandering, often leaving Willie for weeks or months at a time. She got used to these absences. When Sonny was ten, she joined a church, but it took a while for her to get comfortable singing again. When she first left Alabama, she dreamt of being a professional singer. That dream was dead, and her son would soon become a junkie. Later in life, she helped Sonny get back on the right track.

Carson "Sonny" Clifton

Willie's son Carson liked being called Sonny. Sonny was very political, and in his youth he worked for the NAACP as an activist and agitator. His work often landed him in jail, and his mother, Willie, always had to bail him out. He was fascinated with Marcus Garvey and wanted to join the Back to Africa movement. He became disillusioned with his political work after a boy he was trying to help said, "You can't do a single thing, can you?" After the murders of several activists, Sonny turned to drugs for comfort and quit his job at the NAACP. He moved in with his mother briefly before he got a job as a bartender at the Jazzmine, a new jazz club in East Harlem. He had three children by three different women and couldn't support any of them. His addiction soon overcame him. He visited his mother, intending to ask for money, but instead accepted her offer of help. Willie got him clean and helped him raise his children.

Marcus Clifton

Marcus was raised by his father, Sonny, and his grandmother, Ma Willie. He grew up in Harlem and later attended Stanford, where he was studying toward a PhD in sociology when he met Marjorie. His friend Diante was searching for a woman he met in a museum once. Diante couldn't get this girl out of his head and would often go to parties in hopes of finding her. When Diante finally found the girl, she happened to be standing next to Marjorie. Marjorie and Marcus quickly hit it off. When he got a grant to research his family's history in Pratt City, he took her along. She then took him to Ghana to visit her homeland. While there, they decided to go see the infamous Cape Coast Castle. During the tour, Marcus got sick and ran out of the castle toward the sea. Marjorie followed him. They walked into the ocean, where she gave him the black stone necklace that had been passed down through the generations of her family since Effia's time.