Dickinson Family

In 1798 Daniel Dickinson, a young Quaker, sets out with two horses, a wagon full of belongings, his five children and a 15-year-old orphan wife. When Daniel suddenly trades a horse for a young slave, Onesimus, it sets in motion a struggle in his conscience that will taint his life forever and a chain of events that lead to two murders and the family's strange relationship with a runaway slave named Bett.

In 1798, Daniel Dickinson, recently widowed, is shunned by his fellow Quakers when he marries his young servant girl to help with his five small children. He moves his shaken family down the Wilderness Road to the Virginia/Kentucky border. Although determined to hold on to his Quaker ways, and despite his most dearly held belief that slavery is a sin, Daniel becomes the owner of a young boy named Onesimus, setting in motion a twisted chain of events that forever change his children’s lives.

It is 1855. The thousand-acre Dickinson farm on the Virginia-Kentucky border is run by two brothers - Benjamin, who owns the land, and John, a circuit-riding Methodist preacher who manages the land and the sale of cotton and brandy. When a naturalist arrives asking questions about birds and plants, he's invited to stay - but his real mission is to distribute maps, compasses, and knives to the slaves, who then begin to escape, causing chaos on the farm and bitterness between the brothers.