Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

Lawrence Hill is a Canadian author, previously unheard of by me, and my initial somewhat ignorant thought was, what can a Canadian know about the Negro experience.(Okay okay, I admitted to ignorance, okay? Black people are few and far between out here in small town, bc)And so I had a very enlightening and totally enjoyable experience reading this book. It was told from the point of view of an elderly black woman who was preparing to testify in england at a hearing who's intent it was to abolish the slave trade(not slavery, just the trade) The story is then the narrative of her experience. It flowed well, and I found the book hard to put down. I liked that it had no prolonged detailed voyeuristic scenes of violence, which I found so off-putting in Pillars of the Earth. I know nasty and brutal violence played a huge part in the black slave experience, having read and seen it in other books and in movies(Mandingo comes to mind, yuck) but this author wove it into the tale so adroitly so that my dreams were not laced with it ( as often is the case with graphic violence, written or visual, me being such a sensitive sort!)I learned a lot from this novel, having been unaware(I wasn't such a good listener during social studies) that there were Black Loyalist, just United empire Loyalists, which I had presumed were all white and british. Yikes, I am so old and there is so much I don't know yet!!
All in all a great read, made me want to read more by this author.