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.

"In 1790, Lavinia, a seven-year-old Irish orphan with no memory of her past, arrives on a tobacco plantation where she is put to work as an indentured servant with the kitchen house slaves. Though she becomes deeply bonded to her new family, Lavinia is also slowly accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. As time passes she finds herself perilously straddling two very different worlds...

Inheriting the ruins of a Barbados sugar plantation, Emily is seduced by the region's beauty at the same time her new neighbors take steps to acquire the property for themselves.

"A singular and stunning debut novel about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation, the refuge they find in each other, and a betrayal that threatens their existence"--