An orphaned British stable boy, Mungo Mullins, offers shelter to a young black boy found sobbing at the foot of the local gallows, and finds himself drawn into a deepening mystery. Mungo's story converges with that of Abena, a young African girl, who is captured and transported to slavery on a Jamaican plantation, where Mungo himself has been sold into bondage. They escape to join the rebels holding out in the Blue Mountains, where Nanny of the Maroons presides over a community of escaped slaves. This historical novel dramatises its examination of the slave trade and those who rebelled against it with a gripping narrative and well realised characters.