Billy McHugh is a handsome, 16-year-old from Charleston, South Carolina, who sails to West Africa as a cabin boy on his father's slave ship--The Wandering Maiden. They pack the hold with hundreds of Kongo and Lucumi slaves, elude the Royal Navy's slave patrol and set a course for Cuba; delivering their cargo of human ebony to don Fernando de Castilla, the wealthy and powerful owner of La Dulce Gardenia, a large sugar plantation west of Havana. Billy is captivated by the tropical island of Cuba and the Spanish language and culture. And when he meets Dolores, the beautiful 15-year-old, light-skinned mulatto and illegitimate daughter of Don Fernando, he's swept off his feet by her stunning beauty and sweet, simple nature.

They fall in love, eventually marry and struggle endlessly with the contentious issue of race, at a time when one drop of black blood makes you a "nigger." The stakes are raised considerably for social climbing Billy, when Dolores gives birth to a brown- skinned baby boy.

The innocent child becomes the source of ever-increasing tension and conflict in the couple's relationship, threatening the marriage and mirroring the explosive racial divide that has plunged the Nation into bloody civil war.