This imaginative book throws new light on the closing years of Caribbean slavery and the lives of enslaved people of African descent before emancipation in Trinidad in 1834. The book centers on the drawings of plantation life by Richard Bridgens, an English-born artist who became a planter and slaveholder in Trinidad, and examines these, some of which are well known, in the context of contemporary documents, records, reports, and writings of the period. The result is a detailed written and visual account of the everyday life of enslaved people, the conditions under which they lived and worked, and the new creole culture they were beginning to create.