All the realities of plantation life are here: the social gulf between domestic slaves and those working in the field the extreme physical hardship of cane cultivation the casual brutality of slaves' lives, whether in field or house, where a slap, a punch or the whistle of a whip were commonplace. It is a well-researched book that wears its scholarship lightly. We watch July grow up, survive a slave revolt and then become enmeshed in a relationship with a devoutly religious but tragically self-deluded English overseer. Her story continues through the dying days of slavery, including the Baptist Wars – when slaves on the island were inspired to withdraw their labour for ten violent days - through to abolition, the faux freedom of the apprenticeship period, and then early liberation. July moves from the fetid slave huts to the luxurious great house, where she becomes a privileged house slave. But her life is transformed by the whim of Caroline Mortimer, the plantation owner's sister, who is beguiled by the sight of this cute black child and demands July be given to her as a present. Born as the result of a squalid rape, July is destined for a short and brutal existence in the cane fields. From its tantalising opening line, "The book you are now holding within your hand was born of a craving.", July uncoils her dramatic life.
The Long Song is narrated by July, a female slave born and brought up on a Jamaican slave plantation called Amity.
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