What an incredibly powerful and moving page-turner! This true story is an American Odyssey, with the author-protagonist playing (living) the title role and his masters, in particular the raged drunkard Epps, who owns Northup for most of his captivity, playing the cyclopes. Northup was born free in New York (though not Ithaca) and was wont to take odd jobs to support his wife and three kids, and pursue the American dream. He was also a talented violinist, and unfortunately it was this skill that brought him to Washington, DC, and the slave states, where he was drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery on the bayous of Louisiana. But it also helped him survive, as did his Odyssean wit and wiles, until he returned to his home and freedom twelve years later, aided by northern abolitionists and the state of New York.

Besides being a great story, this book is a fascinating vignette of America in the years preceding the Civil War, and in particular, life on the southern plantation in the 1840s.