Sarah Mussi’s first novel, The Door of No Return, is a suspense-filled thriller. It is a robust and vivid adventure rooted in the terrible history and legacy of the African slave trade. Zac Baxter’s grandfather has always told him they are the last descendants of an African King, but Zac always thought it was just a crazy pipe dream his grandfather clung to. When his grandfather, Pops, is killed by muggers, Zac is devastated. Dumped with foster parents, then forced into an orphanage, Zac stumbles from trouble to trouble, but over time incidents and clues arise to lead him to believe that maybe Pops’ obsession wasn’t a fantasy after all. The one thing he hangs on to is his promise to Pops that he would track down the truth about their family history and go to Ghana in search of a ransom paid by an ancestor some 200 years earlier, to keep his son from slavery – a ransom stolen by British government agents at the time, which then disappeared.
Once in Ghana, Zac is alone and without help as he discovers that Pops’ death and everything since is part of a wider plan by some shadowy others, also connected to the lost ransom. In a web of intrigue, betrayal and murder that reaches out of the past to entrap everyone in the present, Zac’s quest culminates in a perilous voyage to the Door of No Return in the walls of the ancient slave fort – through which the slaves were once herded to the boats that would take them across the ocean, on a journey many of them would never survive.
I was instantly captivated by Mussi’s characters and her complex and fast-paced plot. Zac has to grow up fast and learn whom he can and cannot trust in a life or death game that leads him to unexpected allies and adversaries. He’s a street-smart 21st century kid who has to face obstacles and dangers that are way bigger than he is, but as he finds allies and grows to trust himself more over the course of the story, he proves he is indeed the descendant of kings.
My only frustration with the novel is that Mussi chose to have Zac tell the story in retrospect. He writes out his account of his adventures in three sections that track his year-long adventure, and throughout he makes comments and asides to the reader about how scared he was, or how he is so glad he made it out of the danger alive, etc.; I think this lessened the overall suspense that the novel could have had. Zac was in some very scary and precarious positions throughout the book, and if it had been told in first-person present tense it would have kept me on the edge of my seat wondering if, and how, he could survive. As it is written, I didn’t get as anxious as I might have because I knew that he survived the ordeal. Aside from that criticism, I found The Door of No Return a gripping, robust and very satisfying book.
- Posted by Cori