“Life is dear to every living thing; the worm that crawls upon the ground will struggle for it.”

Twelve Years a Slave is an 1853 autobiographical narrative by Solomon Northup as told to and edited by David Wilson. Northup, who was born a free black man in New York state, explains his being tricked to go to Washington, D.C., where he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the pre-Civil War South.