In conversation with ELEANOR SHEARER

Her extraordinary historical debut novel explores the reality of freedom for one mother

As the granddaughter of immigrants who came to England with the Windrush generation, Eleanor Shearer was drawn to Caribbean history, and studied the legacy of slavery for her Masters in Politics at the University of Oxford. Her debut novel, River Sing Me Home, sees mother Rachel setting out on a dangerous journey to find the children who were taken from her.

Eleanor lives between East London and Ramsgate, where she has a house with her partner.

This book has been a long time coming. When I was 16 I went to an exhibition called Making Freedom, put on by The Windrush Foundation charity, which set out to reframe the way we talk about the abolition of slavery in the UK. A tiny plaque said, ‘After emancipation women put down their tools and went to try and find the children that were taken from them.’ I was so struck by this. As a symbol of resistance, the idea of a woman reconnecting with her children felt so powerful. That was the spark that led to my character Rachel.

Being trapped at home during the pandemic, I had a desire to go on a journey. I made a lot of use of Google Earth, working out where Rachel would be at any particular time as she travelled across the Caribbean and into South America, and how long it would take her to get from place to place. I wrote 500 words every day until I’d written a full draft. That rhythm you get into can be quite soothing, breaking it up into manageable amounts. It’s not long before you realise you’ve got a full book.

A lot of the narrative around slavery didn’t give the full picture. We’re told the good white people came along and freed the slaves. But that doesn’t do justice to the people of the Caribbean who played their part in abolition. There is a sense of shame that this happened, but as one interviewee for my Masters research told me, ‘We shouldn’t be ashamed that it happened, we should be proud we survived it.’ I wanted to bring an element of hope, showing a mother reconnecting with her children and finding moments of

joy with her family.

I don’t think much is known about the apprenticeship system in the Caribbean. Despite emancipation, enslaved people were expected to work another six years for their masters for nothing, which begs the question, ‘What does freedom really mean?’ I wanted to use Rachel’s children to explore how you can make a different kind of freedom for yourself.

It was important for me to understand what my own family went through. The first generation of immigrants to arrive in Britain – like my grandparents from St Lucia – just wanted to fit in. They thought they were more English than the English, brought up in the colonial education system in the Caribbean, singing God Save The King. They left that sense of being Caribbean behind. My mum grew up with this idea that there was nothing valuable about our Caribbean history. I think it’s only now that my generation has the security to turn around and say that there is something valuable there, and I’m really proud of my Caribbean roots. It has been a lovely journey to go on with my mum. Stephen King says everyone has their ideal reader – for me it was my mum. If no one else had read it and she’d been happy with it, that would have been enough. She was the book’s first reader.

I was 11 or 12 the first time I visited St Lucia. My grandfather was still alive and it was so special for him to show me the island he and my grandmother left in 1957. My grandmother was one of six sisters so I got to meet a lot of extended family.

I am writing another novel based on Caribbean history. I feel like I am right at the beginning of this journey, reconnecting with my Caribbean roots, and there’s a lot more to say.

✢ River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer (£16.99, HB, Headline) is out on 19 January.

‘I’m really proud of my Caribbean roots’