With all that’s been going on racially in the United States at the moment, how has your book been received? After lots of rethinking Forty Acres took on the form it has now.Ģ. Unfortunately I couldn’t make the story work the way I wanted. I loved the idea for this story because it would give us a modern black man’s view of slavery. Unable to speak due to an injury, he is captured an held captive on a plantation with African slaves.

A black astronaut crash lands on earth, but in the past, during the period of American slavery. Could you tell us how you came up with the idea for this story?įorty Acres started out as a sci-fi story, believe it or not. Check out the interview below to learn more about this budding novelist.ġ. I had the great pleasure of interviewing Dwayne Alexander Smith. After I finished Forty Acres I kept asking myself, “Could this happen today?” It’s a novel that will make you reflect, question your ideas of race and racism, and at times cringe. We haven’t had many contemporary novels of late get into the details of race the way it’s dealt with in Forty Acres. He covers the details of slavery but most of all he delves into the way African-Americans feel at times in society today.

I was surprised at the length and depth Smith’s story went to exposing the problems of race in the United States. Smith incorporates many important themes in this novel that make it a thriller with substance, although some critics may have felt that he could have and should have gone deeper. The reverse racism is presented as a way for these African-American men to “even the score” as they put it. Martin Grey, the main character, is intelligent and a bit of an idealist and at times does things that we as the reader know are a bit reckless but we can’t help but like him and root for him, all the same. Smith’s writing is fully descriptive and his clever way of telling the story explains the legacy of slavery in details that the average person may not be ready to read, but tells the cold hard history that is never told in history class. The novel is extremely engrossing, a real page turner, and very difficult to put down. Little does he know, they are resolute in the idea of preserving slavery where they are the masters and white people are their slaves. Forty Acres, is about a young upcoming African-American Civil Rights lawyer who gets involved with a secret organisation of affluent African-American businessmen. After reading the premise of the novel I was immediately intrigued and wanted to know more about it. I picked up Forty Acres by Dwayne Alexander Smith, while browsing on Amazon.