Christine brown

As manager of an elementary school cafeteria, middle-aged Margaret Tuttle is objective and self-contained. She has no interest in emotions or attachments to those around her. But when Birdie Freeman begins to work for Margaret, things begin to change. With her childlike, unselfish, Christian love, Birdie touches everyone she meets. Soon, Margaret's heart opens in spite of her resolve to remain aloof.

While 20-year-old Harriet is behind bars, she reviews the history of her great-grandmother’s fight against slavery, her grandmother’s crusade against “demon rum,” and her mother’s struggle for women’s suffrage. Now she longs for the courage to leave her own legacy.

Raised on a South Carolina plantation as the house pet of her white master's daughter, Kitty never made a decision for herself. Now, as a young adult, she must preserve her faith while making the biggest decision ever: stay with her master and go south to avoid the Yankees or run away tonight to the North with Grady, the field slave she has come to love.