num_pages: 312
description: A Picador Paperback Original The hero of Zakes Mda's beloved Ways of Dying Toloki sets down with a family in Middle America and uncovers the story of the runaway slaves who were their ancestors. Toloki the professional mourner has come to live in America. Lured to Athens Ohio by an academic at the local university Toloki makes friends with an angry young man he meets at a Halloween parade and soon falls in love with the young man's sister. Toloki endears himself to a local quilting group and his quilting provides a portal to the past a story of two escaped slaves seeking freedom in Ohio. Making their way north from Virginia with nothing but their mother's quilts for a map the boys hope to find a promised land where blacks can live as free men. Their story alternates with Toloki's as the two narratives cast a new light on America in the twenty-first century and on an undiscovered legacy of the Underground Railroad.
language: English
title: Cion
publisher: Picador