Published in 2023
335 pages
Joyce Efia Harmer was born in London. She has a BA in English Language and Literature from King’s College London. Joyce has taught English in Italy and Australia and more recently in a busy London comprehensive. In 2016 Joyce was selected as one of six to take part in the Megaphone Writers’ Scheme to support diverse voices in literature. In 2017 she was selected as a finalist in Penguin’s WriteNow scheme. She lives in London with her husband, two sons and a Havanese puppy. When Joyce is not writing or reading the latest blockbuster, she can be found singing with her band The Shoreless Sea.
What is this book about?
From debut author, Joyce Efia Harmer, comes a groundbreaking YA story of friendship and freedom that crosses continents and centuries, in a timeslip novel exploring the legacy of slavery.
“A powerful debut” The Times
Sometime, me love to dream that me is a human, a proper one, like them white folks is.
Enslaved on a plantation in Barbados, Obah dreams of freedom. As talk of rebellion bubbles up around her in the Big House, she imagines escape. Meeting a strange boy who’s not quite of this world, she decides to put her trust in him. But Jacob is from the twenty-first century. Desperate to give Obah a better life, he takes her back with him. At first it seems like dreams really do come true – until the cracks begin to show and Obah sees that freedom comes at an unimaginable cost . . .
Both hopeful and devastating, this powerful novel about equality, how far we’ve come, and how far we still have to go introduces an extraordinary new literary voice.
