THE MOOR'S ACCOUNT by Laila Lalami

 Mustafa is a young black man in northern Africa in the 1500s who sells himself into slavery to save his family from starvation.  He soon finds himself in the New World on an ill-fated quest to find gold.  Although he is better equipped intellectually and physically to survive than the other men, he remains in the service of a white captain.  Their adventures are laced with hardships, including near starvation and disease, which decimate their numbers, and they find themselves relying on Indian villages to help them regain their strength, until the white men essentially become servants themselves.  Escape in this unknown and unforgiving land is a dicey prospect, but the remaining three white men, plus Mustafa, eventually become itinerant healers for the various Indian tribes in the Gulf Coast region.  At one point, Mustafa makes the poignant comment that he has finally heard the word “thank you” for the first time in his life.  He tells his story in order to correct the historical record that paints the Indians as murderers, thieves, rapists, and cannibals, when the white men are the ones most guilty of these crimes.  One of the greatest crimes, however, in Mustafa’s story, is that of deceit, as he comes to recognize that his contributions to their survival has not won him his freedom.  This is not the first novel about the atrocities that white men committed in conquering the New World, but I don’t know of any others narrated by a black man.  Unfortunately, I found this book tedious, and I had difficulty following the route that the men took through Florida and Mexico.  A map with the locations of the Indian settlements would have been extremely helpful, although perhaps that information is not known.