It stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Lyriq Bent, Cuba Gooding Jr., Louis Gossett Jr., Ben Chaplin, Allan Hawco, Greg Bryk, and Jane Alexander.

It received positive reviews from critics, and won eleven Canadian Screen Awards, including for Best Dramatic Miniseries or TV Movie.

Solomon Lindo, a sympathetic indigo inspector, buys Aminata from Appleby and takes her to New York, where she escapes to British lines as they control the city.

Amidst the American Revolutionary War, she is recruited by Sir John Clarkson to help register names of Black Loyalists in a ledger known as The Book of Negroes.

It was a record of former slaves whom the British freed after they fled rebel masters and was prepared prior to their promised evacuation of Loyalists from the city to Nova Scotia after Britain's defeat in the war.

Aminata successfully petitions British abolitionists, who organize passage from Nova Scotia to the new colony of Freetown (Sierra Leone) in West Africa for nearly 1,300 former slaves.

The Book of Negroes was created to document the former slaves who were eligible to leave; it was assembled by Samuel Birch, the namesake of Birchtown, Nova Scotia, under the direction of Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester.

(For more background, see Dunmore's Proclamation, a 1775 promise by the royal governor of the British Colony of Virginia to grant emancipation (freedom) to slaves who left rebel masters and joined the Crown's forces.)

The writers of the series based Aminata's first owner, Appleby, on a business partner of Henry Laurens, who headed one of the largest slave trading companies in the Thirteen Colonies.

The naval officer who helped the Black Loyalist community in Nova Scotia was John Clarkson, younger brother of the more well-known Thomas, one of the central figures in the abolition of slavery in England and the British Empire.

Aminata's journey to London and publication of her memoir have precedents in the life stories, known as slave narratives, of such men as Ignatius Sancho and Olaudah Equiano.

[4] Clement Virgo and series producer Damon D'Oliveira purchased the rights to Hill's novel in 2009 and began work on a feature film script.

Due to her literacy and skills, Aminata finds work in a white lady's print shop, but she is fired after the owner's son is killed near the black village.

1.7 million Canadians tuned in to watch the first episode of The Book of Negroes, making it "the highest-rated original drama for the network since Road to Avonlea's" January 7, 1990 premiere.