In 1841, at the age of thirty-three, Solomon Northup was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Washington, D.C. Northup was a freeman, son of a freed slave, and he had spent his life in upper New York State. He supported his wife and three children by working as a bargeman, carpenter, and farmer.

For twelve grueling years Northup had no way of sending word to his family or white benefactor up north. He lived in the harsh slave world of the Louisiana bayous, where every escape attempt was met with brute force and degradation. His description of slave life is harrowing and haunting. Only the memory of life as a freeman and the knowledge that his enslavement was a crime kept hope alive. When he finally regained his freedom, he returned to his family and wrote his story. He died in 1863, the year of the Emancipation Proclamation.

From the dust jacket