A young man bursts into the Brimmer study at dusk with the news that a white man has been shot and killed in a cornfield. It's 1859 and the Canadian town of Dunsmore is a terminal stop on the Underground Railroad. Lensinda, who cares for the Brimmers and works with her employer to write for an abolitionist newspaper, is summoned to the scene of the shooting to tell the story. She learns that the victim--who rode into town with a Native American who has since vanished--was a slave catcher and had been shot by one of the fugitives. The old woman is jailed and the town is on edge after the evening's events. Lensinda reluctantly visits the accused to hear her story. The tales that unspool in that jail cell create a vivid portrait of slavery across Black, white, and Native American cultures that spans decades. But even in the face of murder and hardship, there is love and courage, and Lensinda unexpectedly discovers more of her own family history in this moving testament to freedom.

Thomas's mesmerizing debut explores freedom, family, and the interconnections between white, Black, and Indigenous communities in 1859 Canada. Lensinda Martin, a reporter for the Coloured Canadian newspaper, lives in the Black village of Dunmore, a stop on the Underground Railroad. One day, American bounty hunter Pelham Beall arrives in pursuit of six Kentucky fugitives from slavery who are staying with a farmer named Simeon. After one of them, an elderly woman named Cash, fatally shoots Beall, Simeon asks Lensinda to visit Cash in jail to ensure her explanation is recorded and shared. Cash proposes a bargain with Lensinda: she will tell the story of her life if Lensinda does the same. Though Lensinda, a self-professed "woman of little patience," is initially irked by the agreement, she's soon swept up in their exchange and the surprising links between their lives. Thomas amplifies the women's stories with excerpts from a collection of enslaved people's narratives obtained by Lensinda, while stories of Cash's Indigenous husband, John; Black Canadians during the War of 1812; and the American enslaved people who settled Dunmore add to the vivid tapestry. At once intimate and majestic, Thomas's ambitious work heralds a bright new voice. (Jan.)

DEBUT This groundbreaking first novel reveals the shared history between African Canadian and Indigenous Canadian peoples and their relationship to events in the United States. Set in the mid-1800s, the story opens with main character Lesinda (called "Sinda"), an educated African Canadian woman and healer, being asked to attend to a white man who had been shot in their remote fictional town in southern Ontario. Upon arrival, she finds a wealthy plantation owner from Kentucky dead in a cornfield and soon learns that he had been seeking to recapture a family who had escaped from enslavement. When budding journalist Sinda visits the local jail to interview the woman who allegedly killed the plantation owner, she is surprised to learn that her interlocutor, Cash, is her grandmother. As the pieces of Cash's and Lucinda's stories come together, events surrounding the War of 1812, which pitted Black and Indigenous Canadians against U.S. Americans, intensify the narrative. VERDICT This fascinating series of stories within stories reflects the fragmentary history of African and Indigenous people experiencing the effects of enslavement, particularly from a Canadian perspective. Engrossing and intensely readable, this book represents just the beginning of a larger narrative, with many chapters yet to be told; very highly recommended.--Henry Bankhead

A killing in 19th-century Canada sparks a chain of revelations in this fine debut novel. It's the summer of 1859 in a town in southern Canada called Dunmore, "populated by refugees of slavery." Lensinda Martin is a housekeeper, a newspaper reporter, and a young Black woman with healing knowledge who is asked to help a White Ohioan shot by one of the two women he's been hunting under the auspices of the Fugitive Slave Act. Sinda arrives too late to save him, but she interviews Cash, the shooter, in jail, seeking a backstory that will bolster the woman's legal case. Instead, Cash asks her: "Will you barter with me? A tale for a tale?" So begins a beguiling exchange of personal stories that will draw surprising links between Sinda and Cash while dipping into slave narratives that highlight historical relations between Blacks and Native Americans, especially in the War of 1812. In one such tale, a young slave in Virginia named Chiron is led to "the underlands, a Negro village of warriors" built entirely from underground tunnels and chambers. Chiron will meet a Native American named John whose journal will provide some of these stories and whose Black wife is young Cash. Other Native Americans will capture Cash and sell her into slavery in Kentucky. Two of her children will be fierce warriors in the 1812 war. Returning later to the underlands, Chiron will hear a story from its ruler, King Cullin, that is crucial to his family. Time in this novel meanders between past and present like a forest path, and the narratives drift back and forth across the U.S.--Canada border. The harshly real and the fantastic mingle in ways that recall Ta-Nehisi Coates' The Water Dancer and Esi Edugyan's Washington Black. What's most impressive is Thomas' imaginative power; sure-handed, often lyrical prose; and strong, complex, resilient women. An exceptional work that mines a rich historical vein. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.