A few years after she graduated from college, Emily Raboteau received a phone call from Tamar Cohen, a close friend from childhood. Cohen had relocated to Israel, and she longed for a visit from one of her oldest friends. Over the years they had grown apart, so Raboteau didn’t know what to make of Cohen’s request, but she tells us, “Her voice surprised me. It had a desperate timbre.” Raboteau decided to go.

Ten years after Cohen’s call comes Searching for Zion, Raboteau’s account of five African diasporic communities that left one homeland to find another. The idea first suggested itself to