Born on a plantation but set apart from the others by her mother's position as a medicine woman, a young slave is forced to leave home at eighteen and unexpectedly finds herself in an infamously cruel jail. Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Brown was promised her freedom on her eighteenth birthday. Instead she finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil's Half-Acre, a jail where slaves are broken, tortured,...

In 1776, eleven-year-old Felicity suspects that an amateur naturalist visiting her family's Virginia plantation may actually be a British spy mapping Patriot plantations in advance of British raids. Includes historical information about the Revolutionary War.

In 1861, a young slave named Sam escapes to search for his father, who has been conscripted into the Confederate army, and makes his way to a northern city, while back at the Virginia plantation where Sam was raised Annabelle, the owner's daughter, struggles to run things after her father's death.