Heaven's Hill plantation, upriver from Georgetown, South Carolina, 1807: Sixteen-year-old Alexandra de Gambia, daughter of an African-American planter and a mother who passes for white, balances on the tightrope between girlhood and the complicated adult world where one misstep can forever ruin a young woman's prospects. Her dream is to become to an accomplished musician. She will have a chance to impress her first public audience when she plays her violin in the Christmas Concert to be held in her white cousin's famous recital parlor. Alexandra's life turns upside down when her mother dies and her father is murdered by greedy newcomers eager to diminish the status of wealthy free people of color. If the murderers can dispose of Alexandra and her little brother, the only living heirs to Heaven's Hill, they can claim the prosperous estate for themselves. Alexandra and her brother run for their lives.Fearing she will be killed, Alexandra hides and watches as the usurpers capture her brother, lock him in the blacksmith's shop and burn the building to the ground. Guilt haunts her.Alexandra escapes from Heaven's Hill only to be caught by slave catchers from whom she conceals her identity. Sold and placed in a slave cabin, Alexandra befriends John Fowler, a ten-year-old indentured boy who reminds her of her brother. When the overseer threatens to work John to death, Alexandra risks her life to help the little boy to run away and rejoin his family in North Carolina. The secondary plot-line features Alexandra's love affair with a plantation owner's son.