Award-winning and internationally acclaimed storyteller Antonio Rocha brings his newest work, Once Upon a Hill in Maine: The Pedro Tovookan Parris Story, to audiences in downtown Johnson City this August. Pedro Tovookan Parris was born in East Africa but enslaved as a child and transported to Brazil on a ship captained by Cyrus Libby in the early 1840s. Pedro was granted his freedom by the American Consul in Rio and sent to testify against Libby in New England, eventually settling in western Maine, where he learned to read and write, studied mathematics, created art, and practiced public speaking.