The Story Behind Ancestors

Ancestors grew from thirteen years of genealogical and historical research through which Paul Crooks reconstructed his family history from Britain through Jamaica and towards West Africa.

Surviving records identified ancestors who had lived through slavery and emancipation in Jamaica and provided the historical framework from which the novel developed.

Among the archival discoveries was evidence concerning John Hope, an enslaved man on Cousins Cove who was recorded in 1829 as having been “condemned to the workhouse for life, under sentence of a slave court.” Other documentary evidence connects Hope with the Baptist faith. These discoveries helped inspire the novel's exploration of resistance during the years preceding the Baptist War.

Ancestors combines documented family history with dramatic reconstruction, using fiction to explore the relationships, motivations and experiences that the surviving historical record cannot recover.