Day of Tears by Julius Lester, 2005

Based on true events, this "novel in dialogue" reads in part like a play, part like a documentary, though it combines fictive and historical personalities. In 1859 the largest slave auction in America took place in Savannah, Georgia, where over 400 slaves belonging to a once-prosperous plantation were sold off to pay the owner's gambling debts. On that day a rain of Biblical proportions seemed to try to wash away the taint of what took place, and the tears of the families ripped apart by the auction mirrored the rain.