A young girl is taken from her home in Africa and forced on a treacherous journey to America.

Aminata, now grown beautiful, healthy, and literate, is the flower of Robinson Appleby’s Indigo plantation. After several seasons of deflecting Appleby’s advances, Aminata marries Chekura and has his child. Appleby, infuriated, sells her and her child to separate owners. Her new owners, a Jewish Indigo Trader and his wife, Solomon and Rosa Lindo, are more trusting: they treat her as a servant rather than a slave. But after Rosa’s death and the revelation that Solomon brokered the sale of her child, Aminata’s trust is broken. Lindo, desperate for a distraction to ease his grief, sets sail to New York with Aminata, who plots her escape to freedom.

When Revolution breaks out in New York, Aminata seizes her chance and escapes to freedom in the haven of Canvas Town.

After the British defeat, Aminata registers Black Loyalists in The Book Of Negroes for an escape to freedom in Nova Scotia.

As racial tensions boil in barren and destitute Shelburne, Aminata organizes a final journey back to Africa.

Upon their arrival in Africa, Aminata leaves the Loyalists behind to find her way back to her home village of Bayo.