In his new book Slaves in the Family Edward Ball tells a quintessentially American story. It begins in 1698 when Ball's ancestor, Elias Ball leftEngland for South Carolina to claim his inheiritance: a small rice plantation and twenty slaves. The author follows the story of the Ball family and the story of the Ball plantation slaves and their descendants. Ball started his research with records from his ancestor's plantation... and used them to track down the living kin of the slaves that worked the land. He told Minnesota Public Radio's Perry Finelli how the slave descendants reacted when he made contact with them.