PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Sharon Robart-Johnson has a rich cultural background comprised of both African and European ancestry. Her European roots reach beyond the Expulsion of the Acadians in 1755, to the arrival of the Black Loyalists in Shelburne in 1783, and to a slave who was brought to Digby County, Nova Scotia in 1798. Born in the South End of Yarmouth, she is a thirteenth-generation Nova Scotian. Her passion for researching Black history began in 1993 and has continued. In 2009 her first book, Africa's Children: A History of Blacks in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, was published; and in 2022 she published Jude and Diana, an historical novel which won Robbie Robertson Dartmouth Book Award for fiction. Sharon is a past member at large of the Board of Directors of the Yarmouth County Historical Society, which owns and operates the Yarmouth County Museum and Archives, and she has five years of archival experience.
Prepare to be transported back in time. In this, her second novel, Sharon Robart-Johnson provides a logical and realistic picture of a time in the history of Black Nova Scotians that was not viewed as important enough for anyone to record in great detail their day-to-day experiences. Using historical records, Two Sams beautifully shapes the Nova Scotia narrative from the voices of some of the province's first Black Scotians. It also traces the locations and ownership of families, broken promises, and the generational wealth garnered through enslavement by white settlers. The characters use the dialect and speech patterns of the times to provide a feel of realism that enables readers to obtain a glimpse of the complexities and simplicity surrounding their quest for survival in their new land, and the reality of never being fully accepted as citizens. Two Sams is a must for any reader who is interested in Nova Scotian history and the African Nova Scotian narrative. Sergeant Craig Marshall Smith, MOM, author of The Journey Continues - an Atlantic Canadian Black experience
