In 1757, a sailing ship owned by an affluent Connecticut merchant sailed from New London to the tiny island of Bence in Sierra Leone, West Africa, to take on fresh water and slaves. On board was the owner's son, on a training voyage to learn the trade. The Logbooks explores that voyage, and two others documented by that young man, to unearth new realities of Connecticut's slave trade and question how we could have forgotten this part of our past so completely.
"A powerful story, heartbreaking, revealing, and redemptive. The Logbooks invites us to join a voyage of discovery into the 'triangles' of the trans-Atlantic slave trade-a deeply personal and empathetic exploration of history, memory, and identity. To lose our grasp on the past, Farrow reminds us, is to become unmoored from our selves."
John Wood Sweet
""In this rich, rewarding, and ultimately redemptive book, Anne Farrow invites us to explore the connections between the past and the present, who we are and what we remember. Perhaps no historian has done more to unearth the profound, often forgotten ways in which slavery shaped New England's history.""
