“Middle Passage” was another of the ‘short novels’ recommended by Kenneth Davis in his book “Great Short Books’.  To my embarrassment, I had not read nor heard of Charles Johnson, another Black author who I had missed due to the inherent bias in my education and reading.  Johnson, the winner of a National Book Award for this volume, MacArthur and Guggenheim awards, and an inductee into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,  was a professor at the University of Washington for more than 30 years, and an esteemed essayist, philosopher, literary scholar, and screenwriter.   Mentored by John Gardner at Southern Illinois University, he initially pursued a career as a cartoonist before turning to the written word after earning a PhD at Stony Brook.

This book was a great read.  Filled with colorful characters like Rutherford Calhoun, a freed slave who had been educated by his owner and who left southern Illinois for New Orleans.  There, he stowed away on the slaver Republic in order to avoid getting married to one Isadora Bailey, a Boston school teacher and to avoid being killed by Papa Zeringue, a criminal overlord to whom he owed money.  Discovered on board Calhoun became the informer for the captain, one Ebenezer Falcon and a companion to the first mate Peter Cringle as well as the cook, Jebediah Squibb.  What an incredible cast of characters.  After reaching West Africa with little trouble, they took on a cargo of Allmuseri natives, a tribe known for their fierceness and wizardry.  On the return trip to New Orleans, mutiny, slave rebellion, hurricanes, cannibalism, and other tribulations result in a more mature, humane, and wise Rutherford when his shipwrecked Republic is saved by Captain Quackenbush and the Juno.   Amazingly Isadora Baily and Papa Zeringue are on the Juno and a final chapter neatly resolves all of these trials.

I loved it. The writing was brilliant. The plot was tight and the magical realism around the Allmuseri’s god worked well.  The characters were colorful and beautifully rendered.  A grand book and a fine introduction into a writer I should have known years ago.