On this week's episode, I spoke to Eleanor Shearer about her debut novel, River Sing Me Home.

River Sing Me Home is the story of Rachel, who escapes the plantation where she was enslaved and later forced to work for years, unpaid. She runs in search of her five children who had been taken from her over the years, hoping to reconnect with them and reunite her family. It is a moving novel about love, family, freedom, storytelling, resilience, strength and hope.

In our conversation, we talk about the 1843 Slavery Emancipation act, narratives around slavery, re-telling history, the concept of freedom, the importance of storytelling and so much more.

Eleanor Shearer is a mixed-race writer and the granddaughter of Windrush generation immigrants. She splits her time between London and Ramsgate on the English coast so that she never has to go too long without seeing the sea. She currently works for a think tank. For her Master's degree in Politics at the University of Oxford, Eleanor studied the legacy of slavery and the case for reparations, and her fieldwork in St. Lucia and Barbados helped inspire her first novel.

I really hope you enjoy this episode, and I would love to hear from you.

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