The latest addition to the growing canon of books on the Clotilda and Africatown is a remarkable work of synthesis of value both to those who’ve read everything published so far on the topic, and to newcomers looking for an entry point.

The book is “AFRICATOWN: America’s Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created” by Nick Tabor. Published by St. Martin’s Press in late February, it follows a narrative arc broadly similar to that of the award-winning documentary “Descendant:” At the beginning, a retelling of the last voyage of the Clotilda, bringing a cargo of captive Africans into slavery in the United States shortly before the onset of the Civil War and long after such voyages were outlawed. At the end, an accounting of the opportunities and challenges faced by the inhabitants and supporters of Africatown, the settlement founded by some of those captives after the war, a historically unique community that has endured years of encroachment and fragmentation by heavy industry, pollution and destructive roadbuilding.

In a broad sense, it is ground that has been covered before, and not just by “Descendant.” But it has never been covered like this.

Take the voyage of the Clotilda. The first-hand accounts are vivid but sparse: In Zora Neale Hurston’s “Barracoon,” Cudjo “Kazoola” Lewis describes his capture in a slave raid by warriors of Dahomey. Captain William Foster wrote a few pages of memoir about the ship’s trip to Africa and back. Timothy Meaher, the driving force behind the voyage, gave interviews that likely contained some deliberate obfuscation of the truth.

Tabor taps contemporaneous accounts to flesh out these primary sources, building a finer-grained narrative. Other people visited Dahomey in the era when Foster arrived to take possession of Kazoola and other captives; other accounts of slaving voyages were recorded. Using materials such as these, Tabor fleshes out the story, telling more of what the captive and the captain would have experienced as their paths came together in a kingdom alien to both of them. The result is almost novelistic, though the author stays rooted in journalism, keeping clear about the limits of what can be known, what can be guessed, and what inconsistencies remain impossible to resolve.