A former staff writer for the Jackson, Miss., Clarion-Ledger
, Huffman tells two tales here. One concerns the life, legacy and legatees of Isaac Ross (1760–1836), "the man responsible for sending the largest group of freed-slave emigrants to the colony of Liberia." The other combines travelogue and reportage of current events as Huffman seeks their descendants in present-day Liberia. The former is a good yarn, but the latter makes for a plodding read as the diligent author reports all. Ross's will stipulated that on his daughter's death, his slaves should be freed and his Mississippi estate sold to pay for their transit to Africa. The daughter worked toward this goal; her cousin, against it. From probate and chancery to appellate courts and legislative halls, the case moved in Dickensian manner before the will was finally put into effect in the late 1850s. A suspicious fire and a death occurred at the house, but the emigration proceeded apace. In his sleuthing, Huffman meanders a bit, sometimes from one historic house to another or from one repatriate's letter to another and frequently from one person he meets along the way to another. A little less Huffman would have done more justice to the Ross story. Alternatively, a little less Ross might have freed Huffman to go ahead and write the account of his Liberian trip, one where the reader didn't have to wonder where al Qaeda and the Mississippi state flag controversy fit with Isaac Ross, his repatriated slaves and their descendants. Yet the idea behind this book—the who, what, when, how, and why of this body of retransported slaves and its effect upon Liberia today—is fascinating enough to keep readers going. (Jan.)
