Solomon Northup’s 12 Years a Slave recounts the author’s life story as a free black man from the North who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the pre-Civil War South.

The son of an emancipated slave, Northup was born free. He lived, worked, and married in upstate New York, where his family resided. He was a hard working, talented laborer and also an accomplished violin player. In 1841, two con men offered him lucrative work playing fiddle in a circus, so he traveled with them to Washington, D.C., where he was drugged, kidnapped, and subsequently sold as a slave into the Red River region of Louisiana. For the next twelve years he survived as the human property of several different slave masters, with the bulk of his bondage lived under the cruel ownership of a southern planter named Edwin Epps. In January 1853, Northup was finally freed by Northern friends who came to his rescue.

My biggest fear writing a review is spoilers, and I won't write a thing in here except to say you must read this book. I don't care if you want to see or have seen the film. You have got to read the book. I'm dying to read more stories written at this time. There just aren't enough, really, but Solomon Northup is one heck of a story teller. ( )