In nineteenth-century Oregon, lawyer Matthew Penny agrees to help newly freed slave Worthy Brown free his teenage daughter, but when Worthy is arrested for murder, the new turn in events raises the stakes significantly.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, Josephine Weatherly vows to rebuild her family's once-grand Virginia plantation, but her privileged life has now turned into a daily struggle for survival.

At the end of the Civil War, an escaped slave first returns to his old plantation and then walks across the ravaged South in search of his lost wife.

"In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry, freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Parallel to their story runs a forbidden romance between two Confederate soldiers. The young men, recently returned...

"A former slave rises above the harsh realities of being owned and colonialism on Montserrat working hard to buy freedom for herself, her mother, and her sister and becoming an entrepreneur, merchant, hotelier, and planter. Based on the true life story of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas"--

"Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858. Her life story, which she recounted in an oral history decades later, captures the complexity of emancipation. Based on interviews that Joyner and formerly enslaved people had with the Depression-era Federal Writers Project, historian Carole Emberton draws a portrait of the steps they took in order to feel free, something no legal mandate could instill. Joyner's life exemplifies the deeply...

"A brilliant synthesis of African and African-American history that shows how slavery differed in different regions of the country, and how the Africans and their descendants influenced the culture, commerce, and laws of the early United States"--

At the Freedman's Colony of Roanoke Island, a haven for the recently emancipated, the four March sisters--Meg, Joanna, Bethlehem, and Amethyst--come into their own as independent young Black women together facing love, sickness, heartbreak, and new horizons.