In 1816 a hapless black baby is abandoned at night in a basket on the doorstep of a village midwife. She names him Moses, and in the coastal village inhabited entirely by white people, she and her husband, a farmhand, bring him up defying hostility. They discover he has a beautiful singing voice which in time brings him fame. Left in the basket with him was a priceless gold medal and chain, and in the village where smuggling, violence and riots abound, it proves to be his undoing. By the treachery of the village vagabond he is torn from Beth, his sweetheart, and deported to Norfolk, Virginia, and slavery on a tobacco plantation. There he finds to his amazement connections with his village back home and revelations about himself. The mystery of who left him on the doorstep continues until the end of the novel.