Ekundayo is a spirit inside an African woman on a slave ship coming to America. Taking the body of a slave named Nat, Ekundayo pursues the work given to him by Amma, the creator god: to bring peace to the nyama, the souls of the dead. But the brutality of the slave trade and of slavery in America creates so many nyama it is difficult for Ekundayo to know how to heal the wounds. Drawing on his research into the Dogon religion of Mali, Lester has created a rich, complex and rewarding novel. Though confusing in the early going, the epic tale becomes the drama of family lines through American history, a love story interrupted and a meditation on the importance of story, where Ekundayo realizes is the proper resting place for the dead. Dedicated to a white civil-rights worker, this is a tribute to those who “act in ways history does not condone and, by doing so, begin to change that history.” (author’s note) (Fiction. YA)
