Asphodel Plantation...deep in the heart of Louisiana, surrounded by bayous and alligators and miles and miles of white cotton, sometimes referred to by the plantation owners as white gold. Her way of life hadn't changed much since old Master Hughes had bought her as a young girl in the middle seventeen hundreds. Now that they were well into the eighteen hundreds, eighteen hundred and sixteen to be exact, Mama Bella was still living the heartache of this way of life called slavery.