Fourteen year old Sara Frances Browdie has decided she wants, yes, even needs, a mother. She has never had one because her own mother died the very moment Sara Frances was born. Raised by her father in the Colony of Virginia on the eve of the American Revolution, Sara Frances is more independent than other girls her age. Boldly outspoken, she is constantly in trouble even as the Colony is. Some people want to get rid of the mother country, England, while others consider the revolutionaries treasonous. The political turmoil becomes personal for Sara Frances when her grandmother sells Lizzie, a slave girl Sara Frances particularly cares for. She rides off to the slave market in Williamsburg with her father's under-clerk with the intention of bringing Lizzie back to Smithfield to free her.