These are Caleb's first words to his new Master.
Educated as a rich white boy's companion in Boston and promised freedom, Caleb is instead sold down South to cotton farmer Boyd Jardine. Jardine, incensed by the slave's desperate threat, promptly gives Caleb a sound horse-whipping. But after putting him to hard work with the field workers, Jardine soon discovers that Caleb can read and write and promotes him to major domo of the Three Rivers plantation. And so begins the remarkable development of an unorthodox bond between slave and master that will come to a head as the Civil War explodes across America.
Caleb's quest for freedom is a story both tragic and triumphant, set against a conflict that threatens to divide a nation.