Fifteen-year-old Amari witnesses the murder of her family and the destruction of her remote African village. She endures countless humiliations as she is beaten, branded, and forced to board a slave ship. The atrocities continue as she struggles through endless days of backbreaking work and daily degradation on a plantation. Somehow, through it all, Amari's hopes and dreams survive, because there are moments of kindness from an indentured white girl, Polly, and the gentle wife of the plantation owner. Amari and Polly find that by working together, freedom could be possible.
In this well-researched novel, award-winning author and educator Sharon M. Draper successfully embarks upon historical fiction to explore plantation life.