Once on This River — Sharon Dennis Wyeth

It is 1760. Monday de Groot and her mother, Lesley, a midwife, sail from their home in Madagascar to New York, to testify on behalf of Lesley's brother Frederick, who has been falsely imprisoned and taken as a slave. Because Lesley has the only papers to prove that Frederick is in fact a free black man, she risks the journey despite its danger for Monday--the potential discovery of the secret of her own birth. While in New York, Monday meets a brother she never knew she had and learns the truth of her heritage.  She is not a free African child, as she's always believed, but a child of slaves.  The effects of this revelation are astonishing, as Monday comes to grips with her identity and meets her birth mother. Based on historical documents from the 1800s, this compelling story and its remarkable characters will live on in the readers' memory long after the book has been closed.