In the late seventeenth century two penniless young Frenchmen, Rene Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord, a "seigneur," for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters -- barkskins. Rene suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a Mi'kmaw woman and their descendants live trapped between two inimical cultures. But Duquet, crafty and ruthless,...

After his thievery conviction in 1724, Oliver Cromwell Pitts is sent from England across the Atlantic to America where he is enslaved on a tobacco farm, never giving up on finding his sister, Charity, brought to the colonies on a different ship.

In Joseon Dynasty-era Korea, sixteen-year-old Seol, an indentured servant within the police bureau, becomes entangled in a politically-charged investigation into the murder of a noblewoman.