Dream Country by Shannon Gibney

Dream Country by Shannon Gibney was a beautifully written book that weaves the lives of five generations of one family into a special narrative.  Not only did this story tell us of the lives of current Liberian-Americans, but helped make the connection between America and Africa.  Starting with current day Minneapolis and traveling all the way back to the slave trade, Gibney tells of one families struggles to find freedom.  From escaping life on a plantation to trying to find one's place in the modern world, Gibney gives us both a heartbreaking and hopeful tale that should resonate with all readers.   

From Amazon:

The heartbreaking story of five generations of young people from a single African-and-American family pursuing an elusive dream of freedom.

"Gut wrenching and incredible.”— Sabaa Tahir #1 New York Times bestselling author of An Ember in the Ashes

"This novel is a remarkable achievement."—Kelly Barnhill, New York Times bestselling author and Newbery medalist

"Beautifully epic."—Ibi Zoboi, author American Street and National Book Award finalist

Dream Country begins in suburban Minneapolis at the moment when seventeen-year-old Kollie Flomo begins to crack under the strain of his life as a Liberian refugee. He's exhausted by being at once too black and not black enough for his African American peers and worn down by the expectations of his own Liberian family and community. When his frustration finally spills into violence and his parents send him back to Monrovia to reform school, the story shifts. Like Kollie, readers travel back to Liberia, but also back in time, to the early twentieth century and the point of view of Togar Somah, an eighteen-year-old indigenous Liberian on the run from government militias that would force him to work the plantations of the Congo people, descendants of the African American slaves who colonized Liberia almost a century earlier. When Togar's section draws to a shocking close, the novel jumps again, back to America in 1827, to the children of Yasmine Wright, who leave a Virginia plantation with their mother for Liberia, where they're promised freedom and a chance at self-determination by the American Colonization Society. The Wrights begin their section by fleeing the whip and by its close, they are then the ones who wield it. With each new section, the novel uncovers fresh hope and resonating heartbreak, all based on historical fact.

In Dream Country, Shannon Gibney spins a riveting tale of the nightmarish spiral of death and exile connecting America and Africa, and of how one determined young dreamer tries to break free and gain control of her destiny.