Lily Palmer flees with her daughter to take refuge on her uncle’s farm in Louisiana. Here she finds herself in a global struggling with the consequences from the Civil War. For the very first time, she is met with her own careless assumptions about race as she learns to understand the humanity of everybody around her. Threatening the fragile serenity she achieves, her like for Alistair Whiteaker collides with her own dark past, shattering all hope for a new life.

Alistair Whiteaker returns from about Elysium the battle determined to create amends for having owned the women and men who toiled on his plantation. Sickened by his part in perpetuating slavery, he works to thwart the aims of white supremacists and violent racists. At the same time, he longs to make a family members with Lily and her little girl. To achieve that, he must 1st eliminate the man who inflicts a different type of injustice on the girl he loves.

Thomas Bickell uses every ounce of his talent and courage to win suffrage for dark men. An ex-slave himself, he knows Emancipation isn’t enough. When Fanny Brown is certainly assaulted by white supremacists whose true target can be Thomas himself, he realizes his biggest challenge could be to reclaim the center of his beloved.