This radical and moving historical novel weaves fact with fiction to reveal “the great deception” exercised by the powerful on a mixed race child born in the late 18th century and brought up in the London home of England’s Lord Chief Justice.
Dido Belle was the daughter of an African-born slave and the sea-faring nephew of Lord Mansfield. She was freed only on Mansfield’s death and became Elizabeth D’Aviniere on her marriage. Scott imagines Elizabeth’s adult world where she reflects on her disturbed childhood and fears for her own children’s safety at risk from slave catchers. Above all, she yearns for her lost mother. Why did she no longer write? Had she, too, been recaptured? The novel builds to a powerful denouement as the events of Elizabeth’s past engage with the traumas of her present.