A Respectable Trade by Philippa Gregory

Back Cover: Bristol in 1787 is booming, a city where power beckons those who dare to take risks. Josiah Cole, a small dockside trader, is prepared to gamble everything to join the big players of the city. But he needs capital and a well-connected wife. Marriage to Frances Scott is a mutually convenient solution. Trading her social contacts for Josiah's protection, Frances finds her life and fortune dependent on the respectable trade of sugar, rum, and slaves. Into her new world comes Mehuru, once a priest in the ancient African kingdom of Yoruba, now a slave in England. from opposite ends of the earth, despite the difference in status, Mehuru and Frances confront each other and their need for love and liberty.

Man I just love reading books like this and getting continious really aweesome books! I have read a few of her books before, but this one was diff than the others like the other boleyn girl about queens and all that, but this was so real. It was also very sad and reminded me alot of Roots. How the slaves were just snatched out of their homes and on these horrible ships connected to each other by chains and left down to just sit there in their own filth and eat hardly anything and then get shipped off and expected to work! It was sad, esp very sickening when that one guy raped one of the slave woman :[ It's so horrible how poeple treated Africans. They thought they weren't people and were stupid, but then they want to rape the woman and make babies? It's very disturbing and scary. And then it shows that anything can happen no matter how society and rules and laws are because Mehuru, which is an awesome name by the way, and Frances fall in love with each other, but it can't work out. What is it with the forbidden love thing right? You want what you can't have huh. But besides that everything was realistic, I wasn't sure sometimes what they were talking about with the trade and everything, but it seemed like all of that could and probably did happen. With the slaves and how Josiah like bet and loaned and all that stuff. It really is sad how marriages worked out then and some places still are, but I guess that's because I grew up learning marriage is your own choice and because you love someone and that's it! Not your status or position or skin color or none of that! But this book was just very interesting and super sad at parts, esp when Frances dies at the end because her baby is born! But I still liked how it ended because the slaves got free and even though Frances died, her baby survived and is living on within the baby. So yes excellent book, very sad, very realistic and very amazing!