Join author Eleanor Shearer to celebrate the publication of her debut novel River Sing Me Home.

The event will initially be broadcast on 20 January at 6.30pm UK time. It will be available to view up to two weeks after the event has ended and can be accessed Worldwide. If you live in a time zone that does not suit the initial broadcast time you can watch it at any point after the initial showing for two weeks.

If you have any questions, please email [email protected]

We whisper the names of the ones we love like the words of a song. That was the taste of freedom to us, those names on our lips.

Mary Grace, Micah, Thomas Augustus, Cherry Jane and Mercy. These are the names of her children. The five who survived, only to be sold to other plantations. The faces Rachel cannot forget.

It’s 1834, and the law says her people are now free. But for Rachel freedom means finding her children, even if the truth is more than she can bear. With fear snapping at her heels, Rachel keeps moving. From sunrise to sunset, through the cane fields of Barbados to the forests of British Guiana and on to Trinidad, to the dangerous river and the open sea.

Only once she knows their stories can she rest. Only then can she finally find home.

River Sing Me Home is a moving and redemptive novel about a mother’s desperate search to find her stolen children and her freedom. In conversation for this virtual event Eleanor will discuss the way in which her new novel draws on both her family history and the tiny footnote at an exhibition that inspired Eleanor to write this dazzling novel. As 2023 will mark 75 years since the arrival of the Empire Windrush in 1948, this event will reflect on the importance of the history that shaped modern Britain. Don’t miss this brilliant event.

"An extraordinary odyssey of pain, love, and homecoming" Kate Quinn

"An empathic, elegantly rendered and deeply humane novel. Shearer skillfully depicts the cruelty of the British slave trade, contrasted with one mother's indomitable love for her children, and her burning will to live. A Powerful story, beautifully told." Jessica Moor