Middle Passage

<p><b>Celebrating Fifty Years of Picador Books<br></b><br> <b>Winner of the National Book Award 1990</b><br><br> <i>The Apocalypse would definitely put a crimp in my career plans.</i><br><br> Rutherford Calhoun, a puckish rogue and newly freed slave, spends his days loitering around the docks of New Orleans, dodging debt collectors, gangsters, and Isadora Bailey, a prim and frugal woman who seeks to marry him and curb his mischievous instincts. When the heat from these respective pursuers becomes too much to bear, he cons his way on to the next ship leaving the dock: the <i>Republic</i>. Upon boarding, to his horror he discovers that he is on an illegal slave ship embarking on the Middle Passage, the portion of the triangular trade route that saw slaves transported from Africa to the US.<br><br> Staffed by a crew of criminals and degenerates, the <i>Republic</i> is on a mis