The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

They told him he was family. They told him to watch over his brother and gave him nicer clothes, manners and filled his head with knowledge. But what they gave, they took away more - his real family and his memory of her. This beautifully constructed and written book is a song of slavery itself - the brutality, the brainwashing and worst of all the stripping of all humanity until only an obedient husk remains. Hiram Walker has the gift of visions and power but it has been beaten down so often by the Quality that the Tasked cannot hope to fill up what has been taken. It will take an amazing journey and a reawakening in a new Northern world and that of the Underground to fully understand what he has lost and what he can now give to others. Ta-Nehisi Coates shares this story in many ways - a quiet whisper, an anguished cry, and gut-wrenching sob and it is the most powerful voice you will hear this year.