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.

"FINALIST FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE and THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE. George Washington Black, or "Wash," an eleven-year-old field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is terrified to be chosen by his master's brother as his manservant. To his surprise, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is initiated into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky, where even...

When his poor sharecropper father is killed in an accident and leaves the family in debt, twelve-year-old Little Charlie agrees to accompany fearsome plantation overseer Cap'n Buck north in pursuit of people who have stolen from him; Cap'n Buck tells Little Charlie that his father's debt will be cleared when the fugitives are captured, which seems like a good deal until Little Charlie comes face-to-face with the people he is chasing.

An interpretation of the American classic refutes statements about the work's dehumanizing qualities as cited by James Baldwin in 1955, explaining how it served to raise period awareness about slavery and abolitionism and continues to provide insight into modern race relations and other social issues.