Author Description

Leaving Dahomey is set in Dahomey (currently the Republic of Benin), West Africa, in the year 1840. The story follows a year in the life of a hammock-borne fifteen-year-old girl named Adeoha. While her childhood was spent getting into and out of mischief, as she approaches adulthood, she is an outspoken critic of the Dahomean social structure and the Dahomean Kings stricture that the path to ultimate joy is constant work. She says it was a measure to keep the people's minds averted from what's going on about them: the constant slaving wars, the high taxes, and the elimination of all means to express discontent. Through her first friend Sewextu, Adeoha inexplicably joins an ancestor cult of the drum language. She only remains with the group two months through the initiation process. After leaving a rapid set of events begins to unfold in her life; good fortune and artistic. As these seemingly ordinary events occur, it is being bandied about by some; they are connected to the cult of the Language of the Drums and the ancient prophecy of a magic oracle.