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Harper
May 2010
On Sale: April 27, 2010
464 pages ISBN: 0061988243 EAN: 9780061988240 Paperback
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Fiction
Born a slave on the island of Saint-Domingue, ZaritΓ -- known as TΓtΓ -- is the daughter of an African mother she never knew and one of the white sailors who brought her into bondage. Though her childhood is one of brutality and fear, TΓtΓ finds solace in the traditional rhythms of African drums and in the voodoo loas she discovers through her fellow slaves. When twenty-year-old Toulouse Valmorain arrives on the island in 1770, itβs with powdered wigs in his baggage and dreams of financial success in his mind. But running his fatherβs plantation, Saint Lazare, is neither glamorous nor easy. It will be eight years before he brings home a bride -- but marriage, too, proves more difficult than he imagined. And Valmorain remains dependent on the services of his teen-aged slave.Spanning four decades, Island Beneath the Sea is the moving story of the intertwined lives of TΓtΓ and Valmorain, and of one womanβs determination to find love amid loss, to offer humanity though her own has been battered, and to forge her own identity in the cruelest of circumstances.
 Media BuzzDiane Rehm Show - NPR - December 28, 2010 PBS News Hour - May 24, 2010 Studio 360 - May 8, 2010 Diane Rehm Show - NPR - May 5, 2010
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