Set in Colonial Rhode Island in the mid-seventeenth century, Shalla is the fictionalized story of a real person, one of the children of Rhode Island founder Samuel Gorton, who was known as "the New England firebrand." Because of his religious and political beliefs, Gorton was kicked out of Plimoth Plantations, Providence, and Pawtuxet before founding his own colony. He called it Shawomet, although it is now Warwick, Rhode Island. In 1643, soldiers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony attacked Shawomet and captured Samuel Gorton and some of his followers, taking them to Boston to stand trial for heresy. No one knows exactly where his wife and children were during the time he was in prison. This is the story of what might have happened to them, told through the eyes of one of his daughters, a girl with the remarkable given name of Mahershallahashbaz.