Phillips uses letters and journal entries more than straight narrative to tell his stories. In "The Pagan Coast," letters are written by plantation owner Edward Williams and Nash Williams, a freed slave, but somehow the letters never reach their destinations, leading to frustration and disillusion on both sides.
Edward believes he is doing the noble thing by sending former slaves, each given the Williams surname, to Liberia, a nation founded in northern Africa expressly for ex-slaves returned to their native continent. Nash has an education and a deep Christian faith, and Edward expects the best of him.
Disappointed because he has heard nothing from Nash, Edward travels to Liberia himself to try to find him. Once there, his disappointment continues.
In "West," Phillips tells about an aging woman who joins a wagon train with other former slaves heading toward California, or "for a place where things were a little better than bad." She hopes to somehow find her daughter, sold separately years before. Instead her health fails her and she winds up in Dodge City and then Leavenworth, where things go from bad to worse.
The title story, the weakest of the four, consists of journal entries written by the captain of a slave ship off the African coast in 1752.
"Somewhere in England," the longest and best story, is narrated by Joyce, a British woman who falls in love with a black American soldier during World War II. Travis, the soldier, does not even appear until more than halfway through the story, Joyce's loveless first marriage being the main focus early on.
The book does not make easy reading because of all those letters and journal entries and because of the way Phillips shuffles time, especially in that last story, yet his book is well worth the effort.
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