Higher Ground

Higher Ground Synopsis

A searing novel about slavery and its legacy that tells multiple stories, set generations and continents apart but unified by their ambitious exploration of themes of race, power, captivity, and abuse-from "a master ventriloquist [who] giv[es] immediacy and voice to an impressive range of vivid characters about whom the reader cares deeply" (San Francisco Chronicle).

In a slave garrison in Africa, a native collaborator betrays his people and humiliates himself in order to win the favor of white men. From an American prison cell in the 1960s, a black convict tries to impart his vision of race and justice to his indifferent family. And in a dreary city in postwar England, a displaced Jewish refugee watches her youth and sanity slip down the drain of history.

Combined and in the skilled hands of Phillips, these narratives take on a devastating power.