As are virtually all of Butler's writing, Wild Seed is narrated in the first person. It goes on to spin its tale on an outline and scaffold of actual historical time and events spanning three centuries of the slave trade in Africa and the New World. Thus, the novel's three main sections are titled "Book I, Covenant 1690" (6 chapters), "Book II, Lot's Children 1741" (9 chapters), and "Book III, Canaan 1841" (14 chapters). Besides employing the most prestigious accounts of the history of the slave trade and the middle passage to the Americas, Butler has reported that to prepare herself to write the novel she read Iris Andreskis's Old Wives Tales: Life Stories from Ibibioland (1970), George Basden's Niger Ibos: A Description of the Primitive Life (1966), and Sylvia Leith-Ross' African Women: A Study of the Ibo of Nigeria (1965). These works account for part of the feel of authenticity in the characterization of Anyanwu. Another...