"Multilayered, compassionate, and thought-provoking." "Kirkus Reviews" (starred review)
Thirteen-year-old Sophie isn t happy about spending the summer of 1960 at her grandmother s old house in the bayou. Bored and lonely, she can t resist exploring the house s maze, or making an impulsive wish for a fantasy-book adventure with herself as the heroine. What she gets instead is a real adventure: a trip back in time to 1860 and the race-haunted world of her family s Louisiana sugar plantation. Here, President Lincoln s Emancipation Proclamation is still two years in the future and passage of the Thirteenth Amendment is almost four years away. And here, Sophie is mistaken, by her own ancestors, for a slave."