Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

Ten-year-old Sugar lives on the River Road sugar plantation along the banks of the Mississippi. Slavery is over, but laboring in the fields all day doesn't make her feel very free. Thankfully, Sugar has a knack for finding her own fun, especially when she joins forces with forbidden friend Billy, the white plantation owner's son. Sugar has always yearned to learn more about the world, and she sees her chance when Chinese workers are brought in to...

Elsie, now twenty-one years old, wishes to marry an old friend but her father decrees she must first learn to manage her inheritance, including her mother's Louisiana sugar plantation and its slaves.