When Europeans ‘discovered’ the New World, there wasn’t much new about it - upwards of 53 million people had already been living here for generations. And yet, when the Spanish, French, and English landed, their initial instinct was to name everything anew. Such was their collective delusion - the promise of gold and glory blinded these explorers and conquerors to the cultures already calling the Americas home. The Moor’s Account is a fictional telling of Cabeza de Vaca’s ill-fated conquest from the perspective of an enslaved Moor along for the journey. Mustafa, the narrator, weaves his own experience as a merchant in the Barbary states, his fall into slavery, and rise back into freedom through a harrowing tale of survival in a foreign land. His fate and that of his captors are inextricably linked as they make their way from modern day Florida, through the Gulf Coast, and finally down to Mexico.