Born on a plantation in Charles City Virginia, Pheby Delores Brown has lived a privileged life. Shielded by her mother's position as the plantation's medicine woman and cherished by the Master's sister, she is set apart from the others on the plantation, belonging to neither world.Freedom on her 18th birthday has been promised to her, but instead of the idyllic life she imagined with her true love, Essex Henry, Pheby is forced to leave the only home she has ever known and unexpectedly finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous "Devil's Half-Acre," a jail where the enslaved are broken, tortured and sold every day in Richmond, Virginia. There Pheby is exposed not just to her Jailor's cruelty but also to his contradictions. To survive Pheby will have to outwit him but soon faces the ultimate sacrifice.