If you were black and living in the Deep South in 1853, you had one destiny: serve your master as a slave until your death. If you were an attractive, young, half-black, half-white, sixteen-year-old female slave who passed for white, and whose father was the owner of the plantation, your future was less clear. Looking white would not lessen your load-indeed, it would cause you feelings of confusion, love mixed with hate and sometimes violent rage, and a burning desire to get away from the land that was tormenting you. Mary finds herself alone after the only person who understands her, who has helped groom her to leave and travel to the East to live as a proper white lady, suddenly dies of yellow jack fever, which threatens to kill everyone at the plantation who is white. Now alone, with nothing to lose, Mary sees her chance to escape. It is then she strikes up a friendship with a boy her age who wants freedom and a new life as much as she does. Canada is his goal. Two slaves planned to leave the South, but only one escaped to freedom.