Copper Sun by Sharon M. Draper

Draper, S. (2006). Copper Sun. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers.
ISBN-10 1416953485
ISBN-13 978-1416953487
302 pgs
Format: Book
Genre: Historical fiction
Classification: Fiction
Age level: Young Adult

Reader's annotation
Beautiful sixteen-year-old Amari’s life is forever changed when slavers attack her African village in 1738. While most everyone she knows is murdered, she is shipped off to the Carolina’s to be sold at a slave auction. While her new life is unbearably brutal, she takes strength in the pride and dignity of her culture and when opportunity strikes, she makes a plan to find freedom.

Summary
Fifteen-year-old Amari has a happy place within the culture of her Ashanti village in Africa, and is soon to be engaged to a handsome young man she loves named Besa. It is 1738 and all that changes when her village is destroyed by white slavers and she sees her family and most of her neighbors murdered, while she herself is kidnapped and forced on a ship headed across the ocean to the Carolinas. The conditions are deplorable. While she is saved from being raped on the ship by a caring man who teaches her a little English, her life takes a miserable turn for the worse when she is sold to a plantation owner as a gift for his sixteen-year-old son, Clay. Soon she is pregnant and on the run with a condescending, white indentured servant girl named Polly, and the young son of a slave. They are determined to try to trump the odds and make it to freedom, despite no resources and hostile surroundings.

Notes
Copper Sun is a brutal novel, made all the more difficult by how realistically the characters are portrayed. Their thoughts and actions ring true and bring the reader deep into history in a personal way that adds much to factual knowledge of slavery in the United States. There are many graphic descriptions of violence and sexual abuse.

Awards and honors
Coretta Scott King Author Award, 2007