Inheriting the Trade

“This all feels so complicated. If I harbored any delusion that solutions would become readily apparent, today's conversation nailed that coffin securely shut. I stare into the eyes of a woman in an ancient portrait hanging on the wall. Her high collar appears to choke her, which may explain the stern expression on her face. Her eyes bore back into mine. 'Who are you?' I whisper. 'What was it with you people?'”

— Inheriting the Trade

Inheriting the Trade is now available through Beacon Press, Brilliance Audio, Amazon, and other retailers. To order a copy, please click here.

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Buy the Film

Traces of the Trade is now available to order on DVD.

For details, or to place an order, just click here.

Reader Reactions
“[Inheriting the Trade] is really good. Not because it solves anything, but because it gives us a glimpse of the enormity of the mess we're in and a sense we need to learn to live in the discomfort of it together.”
— Reader from California

Listen to the Brilliance Audio interview with author Tom DeWolf, or watch him on C-SPAN's BookTV

Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North

had its broadcast premiere on PBS’s

acclaimed documentary series P.O.V.
June 24, 2008 (check local listings for repeat broadcasts)
Watch a preview here

A Trail-Blazing Memoir About One Family's Quest to Face Its Slave-Trading Past and an Urgent Call for Reconciliation

Inheriting the Trade is the unique story of Thomas Norman DeWolf's experiences during the making of the documentary feature film Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. He is one of ten family members who participated in this powerful journey.

“Tom DeWolf’s deeply personal story, of his own journey as well as his family’s, is required reading for anyone interested in reconciliation. Healing from our historic wounds, that continue to separate us, requires us to walk this road together.”

— Myrlie Evers-Williams, civil rights leader, chairman emeritus of the NAACP (1995-98), and author of The Autobiography of Medgar Evers, Watch Me Fly, and For Us The Living

“Inheriting the Trade is a candid, powerful and insightful book about how one family dealt with the infamous slave trade. This book is jarring in its candor, and revealing in its honest assessment of slavery and the Dewolf family. We must read important books like this one, if we dare to appreciate every aspect of our history, and as the Dewolf family does, dare to change our judgments about the wretched history of slavery.”

— Professor Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, and Executive Director, The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice

“[Inheriting the Trade is] like a slow-motion mash-up, a first-person view from within one of the country's founding families as it splinters, then puts itself back together again.”

— Edward Ball, author of the National Book Award winner, Slaves in the Family

“Exploring the links between a grand Rhode Island mansion and dungeons in Ghana, Tom DeWolf traces the infernal trade that gave his family, and this country, great wealth and power. His journey into the past forces painful questions to the surface, and illuminates our present.”

— Henry Wiencek, Winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award and author of An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America