The conversion of enslaved African Americans to Christianity has been well documented in studies of religion in the antebellum South. Yolanda Pierce's study provides greater nuance to this process by analysing five conversion narratives in detail, those of George White, John Jea, Solomon Bayley, Zilpha Elaw and David Smith. All five individuals converted to Christianity and were subsequently ‘called’ to preach, encountering risks and dangers in their journey. Pierce recounts the key details of each narrative, noting White's difficulty in gaining a licence to preach from the Methodist Church; the intersection between literacy and faith in Jea's conversion, and also his difficulty in failing to convert his wife; Bayley's work as a missionary to Africa, and his role as both a husband and father; Elaw's challenges in navigating issues surrounding religion, race and gender; and Smith's multiple conversion experiences to first the Catholic, and then the Methodist, Churches, and his attempts to engage with the African American community and the remaining elements of African religious cosmology. Yet, in addition to recounting the key details of each narrative, Pierce also highlights recurring themes generated by the accounts, such as the ability of Christianity to help individuals survive enslavement, the creation of a syncretic form of African American Christianity and the potential rift between those who converted to Christianity and those who primarily maintained African religious traditions. A consistent theme running through the narratives is the use of Christianity to help African Americans cope with the ‘hell without fires’ nature of enslavement, and simultaneously refute proslavery arguments that tried to both justify the institution of slavery and stress its benevolence to African Americans. Additionally, Pierce notes how each of the narrators contributed to the development of a distinct African American religious identity, which was neither a rejection of African traditions, nor an embracing of white American cultural norms. The final recurring theme is the issue that, following their conversion, these individuals often found themselves at odds with either family members or other slaves who had not accepted Christianity. Pierce highlights the frustration and, at times, incomprehension, of the narrators, highlighting the potential rift that Christianity could generate within the slave community. While these themes will already be familiar to scholars of African American religious history, Pierce's study is a useful addition to the literature, particularly in her efforts to incorporate a wide variety of religious positions and issues, highlighting the experiences of both enslaved and free, how gender impacted on the religious leadership, and in exploring the relationship of African Americans to different denominations, in particular to Catholicism.