Dean King: Skeletons On The Zahara

Reviewed by MARGIE THOMSON

Proving there's more drama and nightmare in real life than in most novels, Dean King brings us a nearly 200-year-old story with all the freshness and impact of something that happened yesterday.

In 1817, the merchant ship, Commerce, was wrecked on the west coast of Africa. Captain Riley and his crew narrowly managed to elude death several times before being captured and enslaved by Arab tribesmen and women of the Sahara (as we now know that formidable place).

Man's inhumanity to man has seldom been so well documented. Neither has the grace of a kind gesture, and that strange, illogical kernel of hope that keeps people alive in the most terrible circumstances — although part of the value of King's narrative is his ability to simultaneously draw us into the vortex of horror, while keeping a watching eye on the bigger, historical picture.

The landscape of the Sahara, the ferocity of the climate, the knife-like stones over which the captives staggered are all brought vividly, painfully into our imaginations. The captives suffered horrendous thirst, flaying, sunburn, starvation and beatings, and some did not survive.

Riley and a few others finally made it back to America, and his bestselling account of his experiences, Sufferings in Africa, forms the basis of King's own delivery (although he also brings his peculiarly vibrant sense of that era to the story). Following his experiences of slavery, Riley became an active abolitionist in the United States, and it's known that Abraham Lincoln read his book.

It's good to have this engrossing story revived and brought to a new audience.

William Heinemann, $55