Deep South. North Carolina. 1861. Lies, hate, biases, cruelty, deception, fraud, frustrations, and murders abound as a slave family struggles to escape to freedom and a Jewish Lawyer and unhappily married white southern belle navigate a 200-member plantation. Old Grand Papa Pete, determined to be free, helps his grandsons come of age as he prepares them to survive and escape bondage.

Unexpected news interrupts his plan to escape from the Round Pond plantation.

Suddenly, his life and the well-being of his family depend on his wits and ability to manipulate whites around him as it becomes intertwined with the problems of the southern belle, Eva, whom he despises.

Eva has always regretted marrying her poor, cruel, dumb, socialite husband, feeling that she traded her money for his name. But the Smith name was not worth her humiliation and disgrace. Now that he is missing. Her humiliation has furthered into desperation, cruelty, and mental instability when the plantation that she's known all her life is ordered to be auctioned in order to pay her husband's gambling debts.

Pete races to escape to freedom before he and his family are sold. Desperate to save her home Eva summons the only two people she can turn to:

Old Grand Papa Pete, the slave she mistreats and has a secret of his own, and John Francis Bernard Kaufman, the man she betrayed.