The day nine-year-old Grace is called to work in the kitchen in the Big House, everyone warns her to to keep her head down and her thoughts to herself, but the more she sees of the oppressive Master and his hateful wife, the more she questions things until one day her thoughts escape--and to avoid being separated she and her family flee into the Dismal Swamp, to join the other escaped slaves who live there.

Although raised on a Southern plantation and owned by a Confederate officer, a Tennessee walking horse helps a slave during the Civil War.

Having refused to violate her religious principles, even at her father's command, nine-year-old Elsie and her father both suffer terribly during his recuperation from a serious illness, especially since his stepmother encourages the rift between them.

Brutally kidnapped from her African village and shipped to America, a young girl struggles to come to terms with her new life as a slave, gradually rising from working in the fields to the master's house, secretly learning to read and write, until, risking everything, she escapes to seek freedom in the North.