‘For the original transgression of this land was not slavery. It was greed, and it could not be contained. More white men would come and begin to covet. And they would drag along the Africans they had enslaved. The white men would sow their misery among those who shook their chains. These white men would whip and work and demean these Africans. They would sell their children and split up families. And these white men … who had been oppressed in their own land by their own king, forgot the misery that they had left behind, the poverty, the uncertainty. And they resurrected this misery and passed it on to the Africans.’

Epic, sweeping, and at almost 800 pages, it is a whopper, but never boring.

At the centre of the book is Ailey Pearl Garfield, whose ancestors include Black, White and Creek people. She tells her story starting with her earliest memories, with one major traumatic event early on that will mark her for life.

In parallel, the story of her ancestors is told seemingly by the wind:

‘We are the earth, the land. The tongue that speaks and trips on the names of the dead as it dares to tell these stories of a woman’s line. Her people and her dirt, her trees.’

The two time lines meet towards the end of the book in quite a dramatic fashion.

This is a family history but also the history of the US in many ways. It can be confronting and difficult to read at times but it will not leave you until you’re finished. Even then, little scenes and observations will stay with you. It brought back to me the purpose of history: it is nothing if it doesn’t teach you about the present. And how we repeat it in the present.