The Pox Party

I don't quite know what to make of this book. Here's a quick summary: A young pregnant woman is captured in Africa and taken to America in the early days of settlement. Rather than making her a slave, however, both she and her son become the subjects of a long term experiment. The experiment is begun to discover whether blacks given exemplary educations could compete with whites. The experiment comes to a halt, however, when the chief benefactor dies and is replaced by Southern slave holders who have a different agenda. There are other elements – the Revolutionary War, an experiment with smallpox, some of the stranger aspects of the experiment including measuring and recording excrement. I found it a compelling read, but could never put it into my school library.