Escape from Slavery The True Story of My Ten Years in Captivity and My Journey to Freedom in America

Winner of the Books for a Better Life/Suze Orman First Book Award May 1986: Seven-year-old Francis Bok was selling his mother's eggs and peanuts near his village in southern Sudan when Arab raiders on horseback burst into the quiet marketplace, murdering men and gathering the women and young children into a group. Strapped to horses and donkeys, Francis and others were taken north into lives of slavery under wealthy Muslim farmers. For ten years, Francis lived in a shed near the goats and cattle that were his responsibility. After two failed attempts to flee--each bringing severe beatings and death threats--Francis finally escaped at age seventeen. He persevered through prison and refugee camps for three more years, winning the attention of United Nations officials who granted passage to America. Now a student and an antislavery activist, Francis Bok has made it his life mission to combat world slavery. His is the first voice to speak to an estimated 27 million people held against their will in nearly every nation, including our own. Escape from Slavery is at once a riveting adventure, a story of desperation and triumph, and a window revealing a world that few have survived to tell.

Francis Bok is twenty-three-years old and an Associate at the Boston-based American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG). In 2000, he became the first escaped slave to testify before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in hearings on Sudan. He speaks throughout the United States, has been featured in The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal, Essence magazine, and on Black Entertainment Television, and he recently met with President George Bush at the White House. He lives in Boston.

Edward Tivnan has collaborated on and is the author of several books. He was a reporter and staff writer for Time Magazine and helped create ABC's 20/20. He lives in New York.