Second in the series, "The Alexander Saga." Dahomey (Benin), West Africa 1717: Bess leaves home to work her plot in the village garden, never to return. Swept up in the brutal slave trade of the Middle Passage, she seizes an opportunity to survive the Atlantic crossing. The 'Cateret' is the first slave ship to sail into Charles Town harbor after the siege and starvation of the Yamasee War, where Bess is thrust onto the auction block and sold as a slave. Interwoven with her rice-planting masters in the South Carolina colony, her legend of survival begins a two-century legacy of lineage and hope that follows her family from the slave-breeding plantations of Georgia through the frontiers of northern Louisiana and into the harsh coastal flatlands of the fledgling Republic of Texas. Based on the true story.