Fleeing the South Carolina plantation where he has spent his entire life, eighteen-year-old slave Jonah Williams uses the stars to escape to the North and is pursued by both slave hunters and a free-spirited fellow slave who believes Jonah can help her secure her own freedom.

In the fall of 1863, the Union Army is in control of the Mississippi River. Much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is occupied. The Confederate Army is in disarray, corrupt structures are falling apart, and enslaved men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom. When Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman working on the Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with Florence Milton, an abolitionist schoolteacher, dodging...