Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl

"Kate McCafferty has given us a soul betrayed by beauty, circumstance, chance, and cruel indifference" Susan Vreeland "McCafferty's haunting novel chronicles an overlooked chapter in the annals of human slavery... A meticulously researched piece of historical fiction that will keep readers both horrified and mesmerized" Booklist "McCafferty's imaged oral record is convincing - a harrowing tale about events too long ignored by textbooks" Los Angeles Times "McCafferty writes in a graceful prose that is as impassioned as it is artistic" Large Print Reviews The captivating story of Cot Daley, kidnapped in Galway and shipped to Barbados and sold as a slave. The survivor of a failed rebellion, in which black and Irish slaves have conspired to overthrow their masters, Cot Daley is called in for questioning. She agrees to give her account only as part of her life story, wanting to set the record straight for posterity. The tale of her amazing life unfolds: the journey to Barbados, the harrowing years of fieldwork on the sugarcane plantations, and her marriage to an African slave and rebel leader. Kate McCafferty brilliantly re-creates this little-known part of seventeenth-century history, when more than fifty-thousand Irish were sold to the plantation owners of the Caribbean.