It is late August, 1815. Eleven-year-old Jenny Moses and her mother, Annie, work as field slaves on a southern Alabama plantation. When they learn of their master's plans to sell Jenny and separate mother and daughter, they choose to run. During a perilous week-long journey, they are helped by Cato, another young runaway, and together they travel to the banks of Florida's Apalachicola River. There they find friendly settlements of escaped slaves, free blacks and Native Americans. With the aid of an abandoned but fully-fortified British fort, Jenny, Annie, Cato and a new friend-Crazy Bear-are swept up in the hope that a new country of blacks and Indians, one in which everyone is free, can be carved out of this strange new land. In the meantime, there are slave hunters to contend with, such as the evil Rube, and armies bent on destroying their dreams.