Kidnapped and sold into slavery in the American South, freeman Solomon Northup spent twelve years in bondage before being freed. Twelve Years a Slave is Northup's moving memoir, revealing unimaginable details of the horrors he faced as a slave on Southern plantations, and his unshakable belief that he would return home to his family.

Written in the year after Northup was freed and published in the wake of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Northup's story was quickly taken up by abolitionist groups and news organizations as part of the fight against slavery, and continues to resonate more than a century after the end of the American Civil War.