Movie Review: Thirteen Lives (2022). Amazon Prime.

This new movie directed by Ron Howard is an amazing and inspiring story based on a real-life incident from 2018, which we all probably remember (it was only four years ago), where the boys on a Thai youth soccer team and their coach were accidentally trapped deep in a cave, and were rescued under harrowing conditions in by an international volunteer effort that combined with the Thai governmental response.

There was enough coverage of this near-tragedy that turned out so well that any of us who followed it in the news probably know the outlines of the story. What Ron Howard has done is to provide us with a brilliant “you were there” docudrama, showing us an inside view of the boys, their families, the Thai governmental officials and Navy SEAL special operators, and especially the small group of foreign rescue divers (led by two late middle-aged British divers portrayed perfectly by Viggo Mortenson and Colin Farrell) who provided the expertise to devise and carry out the dangerous and improbable rescue, which ultimately saved the lives of all 12 boys and their coach.

In an event that went on for about two weeks, and involved more than 5,000 volunteers as well as legions of international press, it’s hard to capture all the dimensions of what it took to save the trapped boys, and how they got so stuck in the cave in the first place, but this film does a thorough job of revealing added dimensions of the story which I didn’t recall from the news coverage at the time. I will discuss some of them below, so if you'd prefer not to know in advance, you can stop reading now, and just see the movie (i.e. spoiler alert!).

I didn’t realize (or maybe remember), for example, that it was the torrential downpours of the Thai rainy season that caused the boys to become trapped, as a massive storm flooded the cave behind them right after they headed into it. This rain continued to flood the cave throughout the incident, causing treacherous rivers of water to flow rapidly through the cave so that only divers could pass through narrow tunnels that are ordinarily accessible by walking and crawling.

I definitely didn’t recall that there was a massive team of volunteers on top of the mountain, led by a Thai-American hydrology expert, who worked on plugging and diverting the continuous flow of rain water away from the cave, and into the surrounding agricultural fields. This ruined the crop for the local farmers, who were later compensated by the government for their losses, but who agreed to the flooding in the moment, in order to help save the boys' lives.

Most thrilling, though, are the scenes of the divers, including the international volunteer divers and the Thai SEALs, who repeatedly fought their way into and out of the cave to a depth of more than 3 kilometers, through narrow, dark passages full of sharp rocks and fast-moving water, to bring the boys food, medical aid, batteries and hope.

The scenes of the rescue itself are absolutely astonishing and terrifying, since the divers believed the only way to bring the boys out was to sedate them, put them into full-face scuba masks, and tow them in a sleeping state, so they wouldn’t panic underwater and accidentally kill themselves. It was an incredibly risky approach, which they took because there was no other option open to them that seemed to have any chance of success. 

I love a good story about courage and heroism, and people banding together to accomplish something decent and worthwhile for others in the face of incredible adversity and danger, especially outside the context of war. With all the trauma and darkness of the past few years, it’s uplifting to see whole communities of individuals from around the globe come together, and in some cases risk their own lives, to help others in distress. This is one of the most miraculous such true stories told in film I’ve seen in a while. Highly recommended.

Movie Review: Elvis (2022). On Demand.

A few weeks ago, I had a chance to watch the Elvis movie which came out earlier this year. It was definitely worthwhile and very well done, and brought a fresh perspective and new light to the Elvis story.

I can still remember grown-ups talking about “Elvis the Pelvis” in scandalized voices when I was a child in the late 1950s, but my excitement about rock music and its stars didn’t really get going until the Beatles arrived in early 1964. Even though I remember listening to the pop hits of the late 1950s and early 1960s as a boy, on my first transistor radio in bed late at night, Elvis and his origins story were a few years before my time. 

By the time of his Vegas residency years in the 1970s, Elvis had also become somewhat passe’ compared to all the newer music and musicians of the 1960s – most of the young people I knew weren’t paying much attention to him anymore. Yet everyone knows that Elvis was the King of rock and roll, and a singing movie star too (I do remember watching his movies). So what did those of us who were too young to be his fans miss?

This very good biopic does a nice job filling in the historical gaps, and providing a convincing depiction of the power of Presley and his music, his grip on his audience and especially his magnetic effect on the adoring girls and young women of the 1950s. In a world where Elvis impersonators are a joke, or a hackneyed Vegas lounge act, and a dime a dozen as party entertainers, I’m sure many people feared that Austin Butler, who portrays Presley both on and off stage, and actually performs some of his songs, would just be the latest in a long series of forgettable copies of the master.

But I don’t think he is at all. Butler is a very good character actor, who looks the part, and who is as convincing as Elvis the poor young boy, just looking for recognition and a lucky break as a country singer, as Elvis the electrifying singer and on-stage performer, driving the girls mad with the suggestion of those forbidden desires that so offended the repressed and uptight sexual norms of the 1950s.

In an early scene of the unknown Presley first breaking through a sleepy Country and Western audience’s torpor, and nearly starting a riot among the young girls who were present, Butler (as Presley) looks as surprised and delighted as anyone by the effect his performance is having on the audience. It’s an exciting and very illuminating scene, beautifully acted, that sets the table for what is about to happen to Presley's career and his life.

There are also a number of interesting social and political aspects of the Presley phenomenon, and its ultimate effect on the growth of rock and roll as well as American culture, that I didn’t really know, and was very interested to learn more about. It’s well known, for example, that rock and roll, as a form of music primarily rooted in black music and performers, didn’t break out to wider acceptance until white artists and audiences began taking to it.

This was definitely true, for Presley as well as other early rock artists. As the movie shows, Presley personally knew, liked and played with black musicians, and was heavily influenced by their songs and style, but ultimately became vastly more successful than most of the black players ever did because he was white. So was this just cultural expropriation?

Perhaps it was, but I didn’t realize the extent to which the conservative resistance to Presley, his musical style and his sexually suggestive performance moves was rooted in racism, at the time that the civil rights movement was just getting started in the South. The movie highlights the extent to which the authorities controlling venues and the success of Presley’s career were afraid of and despised the growing popularity of black music, and its increasing traction with white kids. And they made Presley pay for it, by reviling him in the press and closing off venues to his shows.

The most shocking result of this racist backlash was Presley’s forced enlistment and two year stint in the U.S. Army just as his career was taking off, which his manager and promoter Colonel Parker (portrayed convincingly by Tom Hanks, very much against type) devised as a way to “cleanse” Presley of his reputation as an “un-American” friend of blacks (and thereby probably also a Communist, according to the twisted political logic of the early Cold War era).

The movie as a whole, in fact, focuses heavily on the cynical role Colonel Parker played in creating the Presley phenomenon and hysteria, while also corruptly benefiting from it, and manipulating and deceiving Presley throughout most of his career. It’s a sad tale, but one which is inseparable from the larger story of Presley’s own successes, artistic genius and setbacks.

As far as I know, there’s never been another cinematic treatment of the story of the King’s rise and fall, and his indispensable role at the dawn of the rock and roll era. This is a very entertaining and informative attempt, well-acted and nicely presented. There are too many years to cover, and too many events, to fully explore every detail of Presley’s decades-long life and career, but this film does a more than credible job of depicting and interpreting the man and the legend. Highly recommended.

Personal Note: My new song, Science Fiction World, is released!

In a moment of marvelous distraction from what's going on in the outer world, I scheduled the release of my newest song, Science Fiction World, for today -- the day after a momentous election, upon which almost everyone's attention has been hyper-focused (including mine). 

I just overlooked the significance of November 8th on the calendar, and didn't consider whether people would want to listen to a new song, and see a new video, the day after the election! Fortunately, though, it's a relatively calm morning after, so we'll continue on with life as usual, and hope for the best.

Anyway, I'm very excited about this new song and video release. The song has a particular retro sound from the psychedelic rock era of the late 1960s I haven't tried to create before, and I'm thrilled with how it turned out. If you haven't seen it (and would like to), just click on the link on the right column of this blog (at the bottom) for my YouTube Channel. The video is a lyric video, and it's a little more abstract than most of my other music videos, but it is very colorful. 

I wrote the lyrics and music, and I played all of the guitar parts, except one short but tasteful guitar part Matt Taylor added during the bridge. I sang the nominal lead vocal too, but for the first time I have other strong voices joining mine: my multi-talented recording engineer and friend Matt Taylor (who also produced the song, as well as mixing and mastering it), plus Karyn Michaelson, a very talented local Seattle singer-songwriter and musician with her own solo recordings.

In his role as producer, Matt also recruited two friends to add instrumental parts, Tim Delaney (electric bass) and Rich Rowlinson (piano).  I'm very grateful to all four of these fine musicians for their contributions to this song. It was just so much fun to work for the first time with other musicians (in addition to Matt, who's contributed drum parts on all my songs), and all together, I think it makes for an exciting and rich sound. 

By the way, in addition to the music video on YouTube, the Science Fiction World song is also available now on all the music streaming services, along with all my other songs.

One other musical note for the near future: even though I've released two singles already this fall, I have yet another song finished which is scheduled for release on November 22nd. It's called I'm Watching You. It too has a totally different style from any of my previous songs, with an island lilt and a story of love and family which will arrive just in time for Thanksgiving. I haven't announced this release anywhere else, so you heard it here first.

Enjoy, and I'll be back soon with more reviews!

TV Review: Extraordinary Attorney Woo (Season 1). Netflix.

A friend who recently found her way into the vast world of South Korean television on Netflix suggested we take a look at this show. We were not disappointed, although it was quite different in many ways from any other show I’ve watched before.

There were a couple of hurdles we had to get over when we first started watching it. The first was that, like most foreign TV shows, it required reading sub-titles. That problem resolved itself while we were watching one of the later episodes in this first season, when I noticed a message while bringing up the show in Netflix that dubbing in English was now available. 

Without doing anything to my settings, when the show came on, it now had American English and slang coming out of the characters' mouths. That was actually a little jarring at first, since we knew from prior shows that these are Koreans in their own native land, who definitely aren’t speaking English. But we got used to it, and it did help not to have to read the sub-titles thereafter.

The other hurdle was getting used to the different norms, cultural standards and behavior of South Korean society, as opposed to our own, and figuring out from the plot what those differences were. It took a little while to get used to that, but it was well worth it, and also culturally enlightening.

But now, the show.  The series tells the story of Woo Young-Woo (played enchantingly by Park Eun-bin), a petite young Korean woman just beginning her career as an attorney. However, she is no ordinary new lawyer, as we find out wonderfully from the opening scenes from her childhood. 

She carries the heavy burden of a serious autism condition, with many of the characteristic abnormal physical mannerisms, difficulties with noise, touch and sensory over-stimulation, and the tendency to make abrupt “too honest” statements that create awkward social situations for her. She also carries the built-in disadvantage (perhaps even heavier there than in our society) of being one of the few women in an ancient profession dominated by men.

But she is also “extraordinary” in that she has a photographic memory, an IQ of 164, and the ability to rapidly analyze every law and statute of the South Korean legal code in her head, and apply it to finding creative solutions to the civil and criminal cases before her. This brilliance, which led her to being the top student in her law school, is a super-power, but it also makes her (at least initially) the envy of her fellow young aspiring attorneys, who are all jockeying for position in a high-end law firm.

Then there is the curious mystery of her parentage. We know who her father is, and he is the loving parent who has raised her, who she loves and with whom she still lives. We don’t know who her mother is at the outset, but as that plot line develops, it becomes another important part of the story, and adds to the more serious and dramatic aspects of Woo Young-Woo’s new life situation as an adult and a lawyer.   

And of course, eventually there’s romance, although it’s no ordinary challenge for her to navigate that otherwise normal life process. How does a person with her disabilities and especially her aversion to touch navigate learning how to love and be close to another person in a romantic way? Yet the results seem both realistic and very satisfying.   

This is an almost unbelievably sweet and enjoyable entertainment. Not unlike most of our TV shows from the United States, the cast is filled with good-looking young actors who are persuasive and engaging in their roles. But at the center of it all is Woo Young-Woo, and the amazing performance of Park Eun-bin in the role, with all her endearing odd behaviors, her kindness, gentleness and wisdom, her search for a role for herself centered on her search for justice and fairness in a tough and complex world, and her encyclopedic knowledge of and love for whales. 

Apparently the show has been renewed for another season. And it’s just so fun!  It's one of my favorite new TV series from the past year, and a great introduction to South Korean television. Highly recommended.

Movie Review: Summerland (2020). Netflix.

This pleasing family drama was a historical period piece about England during the Blitz in World War II, exploring one more of the endless possibilities of circumstance, individuals and relationships that faced life-changing pressures under the savage bombing attacks of a brutal megalomaniac and his industrialized war machine.

I’ve often wondered of late whether the war in Ukraine will spawn a very similar literature over the course of the next hundred years. If it does, I hope they translate the best of it to English. There are few such similar historical analogies before or since World War II, of a modern peaceful urban population suddenly facing an unjust onslaught of death and destruction from a murderous dictator. The millions of Ukrainians who have had to flee with the non-combatant members of their families, or stay and fight and endure, will have countless compelling and dramatic stories to tell, or provide the scenarios for fictional versions of what they and their entire society are currently experiencing.

In Summerland, an irritable young female English writer (peevishly played by Gemma Arterton) in the rural seaside west of England is assigned a young boy evacuee (Lucas Bond) from wartime London during the worst of the bombing, to care for and harbor in her little house. The boy arrives with no warning, and is presented to her by a local civil defense volunteer, who offers no opportunity for the writer to decline the duty of hosting the uninvited pre-teen guest.

In the beginning, the young woman behaves predictably badly. She tries ignoring the boy, and leaves him more or less to fend for himself. But of course as any parent who has lived with a child underfoot knows, that’s not a very promising strategy in the face of a real and present young person with traumas, individual needs and a personality that require an adult hand, direction and wisdom to survive, develop and prosper.

With time and passing events in their daily lives, the writer and the child start to build a bond, a sense of family and caring for each other. And to her credit, she slowly manages to become the generous person and responsible adult the boy needs, even before she learns the surprising news about the real personal connection in her own life that had brought the boy to her.

It’s a charming and heartwarming story, with a happy ending and plot twists I can’t reveal (spoiler alert). It is definitely worth watching, especially if you’re feeling a need for stories of people under duress rising to the occasion, and being kind to each other in the face of unimaginable horrors and dangers. Recommended.

Movie Review: Taylor Swift’s Journey to Fearless (2011). Taylor Swift.

It’s Rock and Roll Friday again here at The Memory Cache, so today I’m highlighting a decade-old documentary and concert video of one of the greatest rock stars (if not the greatest) of the recent musical past and present. I hope you enjoy it!

I might be mistaken, but it seems to me that full-length concert videos of performances and tours by major musical stars are probably becoming a thing of the past. Instead, these days we tend to get mostly brief videos of single songs performed and recorded at shows. These short live song clips usually go straight to YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, and aren't usually all that well compiled or edited.

If it is the end of the era of full-length rock concert tour videos, that would be very unfortunate. A well-made concert video captures much of the excitement of a live performance, with better sound quality and viewer-adjustable sound levels, and crystal-clear images of the performers as good as or better than the view you would get from front-row seats, especially when seen on a large-screen HD TV with a decent sound system. And these videos often capture enough of the joy of hearing one well-loved song after another, played by our favorite musicians before a live audience of their devoted fans, to convey some of the special energy and excitement of the large rock concert experience.

I have a small library of DVDs (remember those?) of concert tours by some of my favorite rock stars. One of the best and more recent such videos in my collection is Taylor Swift’s Journey to Fearless, originally released as a three-part documentary.

It begins with a bit of a biography of Swift, from early childhood to the beginning of her now-legendary career as one of the top country, rock and pop stars of our lifetimes. It is then followed by a full-length film of her performing songs in her Fearless Tour, the first tour in which she was the featured attraction rather than the opening act for more established country stars.

Ms. Swift released a new album last week, Midnights, her tenth studio album. She is by now such a megastar and mature singer-songwriter, musician, entrepreneur, producer, director, social media influencer, and artist that it is hard to believe that someone with so many professional talents and accomplishments to her credit is still only 32 years old.

I “discovered” Taylor Swift's music well along in her career. I only started listening to her in 2020, with the release of her pandemic-era smash hit album Folklore, which immediately won her a Grammy. That was the first music of hers that I’d noticed, even though of course I knew she was a huge pop star, who everyone had been talking about for a long while.

Of course, it isn’t surprising that I hadn’t paid attention to her before. She and her storied career really belong to other more recent generations, the Millennials and maybe Gen Z particularly, and her fan base skews heavily female. But even as a male rock music fan from an earlier era, I was immediately taken with her evocative storytelling, her lyrics, her voice, the range of emotions she conveys, her sense of humor, the musical styles she has embraced and explored, and the sheer magnetism of her public personality. So as a newcomer to her and her music, I bought a DVD copy of Journey to Fearless online to get more of a sense of her as a musician and performer than I could get just by listening to her studio albums.

It turned out that this video provides not just concert footage, but considerable insight into many aspects of the rise of this truly remarkable artist. The documentary begins by tracing the path she followed in becoming a star, from her childhood obsession with writing and performing songs for her family and friends, her family’s move to Nashville when she was 14 to support her relentless adolescent drive to build a life and career as a musician, her first lucky breaks, her mistakes and opportunities getting a recording contract, and the release of her first album, the eponymously named Taylor Swift.

From there, we learn about her early touring experiences opening for other country music acts, and the explosive release of her second album Fearless, which was soon charting massive sales to her increasingly energized fan base. We then discover how the success of these first two albums led to her first headlining tour, the Fearless Tour, which played at arenas around the world for more than a year in 2009 and 2010.  

At the end of the pre-concert documentary sections, we learn how much Swift participated in creating many aspects of the show and the tour, in addition to the musical performances. She apparently provided direction and inspiration for the construction of the stunning stage design and lighting, which were based on her love of theatrics and fairy tales. She is credited in the video as a producer for sets and stage design, the music, the dancing, the costumes, the video production, and pretty much every other aspect of the tour and the film documentary made about it.

When I saw the credits at the end of the video, I was simply amazed that a new artist not yet even 21 years old was so thoroughly involved in creating every aspect of a complex, sophisticated tour and multi-media production, which ultimately grossed more than $66 million, put on 118 arena shows across the USA and abroad, and was seen by more than a million fans.  

When I watched the performance portion of the video, I was similarly astonished. In performing 13 of her by-now iconic songs from the tour, we see her singing, backed by a tight band of top-flight rock and country musicians, and accompanying herself beautifully on the piano, as well as playing a large variety of acoustic and electric guitars, a banjo, a ukulele, and probably a few other instruments I’ve forgotten. She also often danced, along with a small troupe of professional dancers and backup singers, and performed some short musical theatrical scenes in support of the stories of some of the songs. At one point she even flew high over the crowd in an elevated lift, singing her parts perfectly without missing a beat.

The lighting was spectacular, the special effects continuous. She reputedly did roughly eight costume changes per show, and she was the center of attention every moment at every single concert, surrounded by her rapt and adoring fans, many of them young girls her own age and younger, who  were there past bedtime with their happy parents. It was like Disney World on steroids, combined with a fantastic rock and roll extravaganza, all as envisioned and performed by a brilliant multi-dimensional talent and precocious megastar, who was only 20 years old at the time, and doing all this for the first time in her career.

We’ve all been hearing about Taylor Swift since she was 15 years old – it’s hard to believe it’s already been so many years since she first appeared. But this powerful documentary and concert video demonstrate clearly how and why the blockbuster career of this unique pop music and cultural icon came to be, and why she continues to fascinate and thrill her millions of loyal fans around the world. Highly recommended.  

Book Review: Flight of Passage (1997). Rinker Buck.

Hello! As you may have noticed, I’ve been on a mini-sabbatical of sorts the past few weeks. My music and video production activities have been at an unusually high rate recently, which is part of it, but I’ve also been focused on some other personal matters that temporarily took priority. I suppose in the long run this happens to everyone, whether they’re working at a paid job, or just treating a hobby as though it were one!

But just to reassure you – I haven’t gone anywhere, and I haven’t lost interest in writing this blog and posting my reviews yet – quite the opposite. I’ll be back with more reviews in the next couple of weeks, plus let’s not forget that tomorrow is Rock and Roll Friday here at The Memory Cache. I’ll have something new for that.

Today though, I wanted to write a review about a book which has been in print for 25 years (so it’s a 25-year anniversary review, right?), but actually I’m reviewing it because it is one of my very favorite books and coming of age stories ever, and I wanted to share it with you.

Rinker Buck is a writer and former journalist who started his writing career as a recent college graduate in the early 1970s. He has gained considerable acclaim over the years for his newspaper and magazine writing, but in the mid-1990s he decided it was time to give his own account of a remarkable episode from his teenage years, back in the mid-1960s, which led him to write this book.

That episode was a several-week-long trip he took across the continental United States with his older brother Kernahan in a tiny 2-seat Piper Cub from the 1940s, which the brothers first expertly rebuilt over the previous winter before setting out on their epic journey. By the end of it, due in no small part to the unsolicited promotional efforts of their father, the trip and the two boys were headline news across the country. It was a lot to handle for a 15-year adolescent, and his 17-year-old brother with a new pilot’s license, and less than 100 hours of “pilot in command” experience.

That’s the core of the story. But there is so much more to it. Not surprisingly, this book and the exploits of the two Buck boys are legend within the aviation community, where pilots of many generations have delighted in Rinker’s descriptions of the challenges of flying and navigating a small, fragile airplane with no radio through terrible weather, high mountains, and across wide plains, using old-fashioned piloting techniques like following roads and rivers, reading paper charts, and using only a simple compass to find their way, without any GPS or modern location-finding equipment aboard. And it is a terrific story for those elements alone, which appeal to the adventurous spirit of all pilots, as well as those of us who love stories of dangerous travel, exploration, individual bravery and overcoming the fear of the unknown.

But wait, there’s more! It turns out that Rinker and his brother were the two oldest brothers in a very large Irish Catholic family, at precisely that time in American history when these sorts of families were inherently interesting to the public, due to the recent prominence of the Kennedy family and the fascination with the JFK presidency. And at the head of their family was an eccentric, larger than life but overbearing father, a disabled survivor of plane crashes, with an epic younger life as a barnstorming pilot in the 1920s and 1930s, and a determination to see his two oldest sons follow in his daring early aviation footsteps.

So Rinker’s story is anything but just the narration of an exciting youthful experience. Instead, throughout, he writes hilarious and moving anecdotes, insightful observations and wonderful smart-alecky dialogue that capture perfectly all the dynamics of his complex relationships with his father and his older brother, as well as other members of his large and lively family.

As the story unfolds, he paints a vivid picture of how the two brothers learned to work together not only to rebuild and fly their plane, and dream up and complete their own defining personal adventure, but also to become the young men they soon would be, both because of and yet also in spite of their father’s hopes and dreams for them.

This is a coming of age story that is truly extraordinary, but also somehow so universal. It captures perfectly that moment where we set out to take on the world, while trying to figure out how to cut ourselves loose from the ties of love and parental expectations that bind us to our parents and families. Flight of Passage is definitely high on my lifetime “best books” list. Very highly recommended.

Book Reviews: Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History (2008), Thomas Norman DeWolf, and The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning (2022), Ben Raines.

Earlier today, I posted a review of The Sweetness of Water, an outstanding novel of life in the immediate aftermath of the end of the Civil War and slavery in the South.

For readers interested in reading more on the history of slavery, the slave trade, the impacts of the Civil War and the collective responsibility of white society for the ongoing consequences of racism against slaves and their modern African-American descendants, there are two other non-fiction books I’ve read recently which bear mentioning here. Both should be available from local libraries and online booksellers.

In Inheriting the Trade, the author, Thomas Norman DeWolf, told the story of the production of a documentary film made in the early 2000s about the efforts of a dozen descendants of a wealthy Rhode Island family to collectively discover and come to terms with the role played by their influential rich white ancestors in contributing to and profiting from the slave trade throughout much of its ugly history.

A relative of mine told me that the documentary film that was the product of this family's project, as recounted in this book, has continued up to the present day to be an influential media resource within the Episcopal Church community nationwide, in the church’s efforts to come to terms with white complicity in the slave trade and its legacy, in trying to support anti-racist and social justice movements, and in discussing controversial ideas such as the quest for reparations for the descendants of slaves.

Inheriting the Trade asks many of us who are white, particularly those whose families have been in North America since the early days of European colonization, and especially those in the North, where many wrongly believe “the North wasn’t involved in slavery”, to think more deeply about how the evils of slavery and the slave trade advantaged our own ancestors, and about what individual responsibilities we might have to try to make amends for that, even at this late date. Recommended. 

 

I also recently read a new non-fiction history book, The Last Slave Ship, by Ben Raines. Mr. Raines is a historian who was tracking down the little-known story of the Clotilda, a sailing ship that was used by several conspirators from Alabama to bring a load of African slaves to the United States shortly before the Civil War.

This slave voyage was noteworthy, because it occurred decades after slave importation had become illegal in the United States. The apparent purpose of the voyage was to win a bet, by proving that it was still possible to bring new slaves to the South from Africa, despite aggressive maritime enforcement against it by the United States, England and other European countries. And indeed the plotters were successful in buying more than a hundred slaves on the African coast, and managing to transport most of them alive, and into slavery in Alabama.

Among my many other reading interests, I’ve always enjoyed stories of deep-sea exploration for famous old sunken wrecks, which is what I expected to be the focus of this book. In fact, though, the recent discovery and partial recovery of the Clotilda, which was burned and scuttled by the owners shortly after the slaves were brought ashore, in order to destroy the evidence of the plotters' crimes, forms only a minor part of the narrative. 

The author was more interested in telling the story of the more than 100 “late-arriving” slaves from the Clotilda, who were freed at the end of the Civil War, only a few years after they were brought here against their will, but who then maintained a relatively isolated community in Alabama called Africatown, where many of their African traditions from before slavery were preserved well into the twentieth century.

This book is not the most lively account I’ve read on various aspects of the several hundred year history of slavery – in parts, the writing seemed a little plodding -- but it is a unique story from that history which apparently has not been told before, and it needed to be. Recommended.