"'How does it feel, Kit? To be free?

'Oh my child, it's like nothing else. If you are free, you can do whatever you want.'"

When Washington Black, a slave, was chosen by his master's brother Titch as an assistant for scientific research and boarded a balloon called Cloud-bat, he certainly did not know that he was traveling to freedom. The years of a black child's life were filled with endless tragedies, first loves, a mother's paradise lost again and again, and the uncanny vagaries of freedom.

At the end of this path from the West Indies to America, from slavery to science painting, Washington Black had a question to answer as he looked after his master Titch, who had thrown him into the middle of life:

Freedom to do whatever you want or love for a human being? Which makes us free?