Eliza and Amelia, two black household servants on a 
Louisiana plantation, are treated harshly by their white owners, John Phares and his wife.  But their lives improve with the marriage of the Phares’ daughter Mary to the abolitionist school teacher William King.

Mary defies her parents’ wishes by adopting her 
husband’s anti-slavery views, thereby earning Eliza and Amelia’s trust.  With their help the two slave women learn of the Underground Railroad and begin their journey to freedom and a new life in the free black Canadian community of Buxton, Ontario