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Start giftingThe Slave Dancer
This audiobook uses AI narration.
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Learn moreJessie Bollier often played his fife to earn a few pennies down by the New Orleans docks. One afternoon a sailor asked him to pipe a tune, and that evening Jessie was kidnapped and dumped aboard The Moonlight, a slave ship, where a hateful duty awaited him. He was to play music so the slaves could "dance" to keep their muscles strong, their bodies profitable. Jessie was sickened by the thought of taking part in the business of trading rum and tobacco for blacks and then selling the ones who survived the frightful sea voyage from Africa. But to the men of the ship a "slave dancer" was necessary to ensure their share of the profit. They did not heed the horrors that every day grew more vivid, more inescapable to Jessie. Yet , even after four months of fear, calculated torture, and hazardous sailing with a degraded crew, Jessie was to face a final horror that would stay with him for the rest of his life.
Paula Fox is the author of Desperate Characters, The Widow’s Children, A Servant’s Tale, The God of Nightmares, Poor George, The Western Coast, and Borrowed Finery: A Memoir, among other books. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Peter MacNicol is an actor best known for his role as John Cage on Ally McBeal, for which he won an Emmy Award in 2001. His other television shows include Chicago Hope, Grey’s Anatomy, and Veep. As a narrator, he can be heard on Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor and The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox.
Paula Fox is the author of Desperate Characters, The Widow’s Children, A Servant’s Tale, The God of Nightmares, Poor George, The Western Coast, and Borrowed Finery: A Memoir, among other books. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Peter MacNicol is an actor best known for his role as John Cage on Ally McBeal, for which he won an Emmy Award in 2001. His other television shows include Chicago Hope, Grey’s Anatomy, and Veep. As a narrator, he can be heard on Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor and The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox.