Twelve-year-old June Lilly, known as “Julilly,” lives with her mother, Mammy Sally, on a plantation in Virginia, where they are enslaved by Jeb Hensen and his wife, Missy Hensen. One June night, Julilly hears people in the slave quarters singing about the biblical story of people escaping slavery in Egypt. Julilly feels uneasy about the song and the rumors that are circulating among the slaves. Old John, the coach driver, had spread the word to his fellow slaves that Jeb Hensen is sick and needs to go to the hospital, and his farm is no longer as profitable as it had once been. Old John had learned that Jeb Hensen plans to sell some of his slaves to plantations in the Deep South. This news frightens the enslaved people at the Hensen plantation since they know that slave traders separate family members, and plantation owners in the Deep South have a reputation for cruelty.

Mammy Sally tells Julilly that they must pray to God for help. She reveals to Julilly that there is a place in the north called Canada where there is no slavery, and slaves can reach it by following

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