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Intro
Hannah is born to an enslaved mother on a plantation named Lindenhurst in the 19th century. The master who enslaves Hannah traces his ancestry to Sir Clifford de Vincent, a hard and cruel man whose sadistic execution of an enslaved woman named Rose caused her to curse his descendants. The master sells Hannah’s mother when Hannah is still a baby, so there’s no one to discipline or teach her as she grows up. Nevertheless, she has a sweet (if strong-willed and autonomous) temperament. Because of this—and her skin, which is so fair she could easily pass as White—she becomes a member of the household staff (a position that is far preferable to working in the field).
As a young girl, Hannah longs to read, and when she meets a kindly woman who grew up in the North and has a dim view of enslavement (Aunt Hetty) she knows that divine providence has sent her a teacher. Aunt Hetty and her husband Uncle Siah teach Hannah how to read, the basic tenets of Christianity, and—by their shining example—how to live a virtuous life. Thus, it’s a heartbreaking blow to her when they’re caught giving her lessons and subsequently disappear from her life.
Hannah’s life takes a drastic turn in her adulthood, when the master finally marries. She immediately likes his wife, the mistress, who treats her more like a friend than a servant. Hannah quickly realizes that something is amiss between the mistress and Mr. Trappe, a lawyer and one-time associate of the mistress’s father. Eventually, the mistress explains that she’s actually a light-skinned mixed-race person, technically born into enslavement but raised as her father’s daughter only because her mother or her nurse secretly switched her with her enslaver’s dead baby when she was an infant. Mr. Trappe has been blackmailing her since he found this out, but she doesn’t have the money to keep paying him off.
Before Mr. Trappe can reveal the mistress’s dreadful secret, she and Hannah run away. They try to go north but get lost and take shelter for the night in the home of a country lady who turns out to be Mr. Trappe’s sister. He almost catches them here, but they flee and spend months in the forest, squatting in an abandoned cabin where a gruesome murder took place. The mistress begins to lose her sanity. Finally, as fall turns to winter, a party of game hunters find the women and bring them into a nearby town where they’re incarcerated. Eventually, a slave hunter named Hayes shows up, claims them, and takes them to their current enslaver, who purchased them after the master recently took his own life. This new enslaver, they learn, is Mr. Trappe.
Mr. Trappe plans to sell the women to Mr. Saddler, who forces enslaved women into sex work. The mistress is so overwhelmed with horror that she dies on the spot, leaving Hannah to ride on her own with Mr. Saddler in a wagon heading toward New Orleans. A dreadful accident on the road costs Mr. Saddler his life and conveys Hannah into the temporary care of a White woman named Mrs. Henry. In Mrs. Henry’s household, Hannah meets an enslaved woman named Charlotte, who is married to a man named William, who is enslaved by one of the Henrys’ neighbors (Mr. Cropp). When Charlotte and William decide to run away, they invite Hannah to join them.
Hannah declines, and soon thereafter finds herself in the service of Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler, a vain and conceited and politically conniving couple. They take Hannah to Washington, D.C., where Mr. Wheeler spends his time chasing political appointments. When Mrs. Wheeler significantly embarrasses herself in the city, the family beats a hasty retreat to their North Carolina plantation. Just before they do, Hannah runs into Lizzy, an enslaved woman she knew at Lindenhurst. Lizzy tells her the tragic tale of the Cosgroves, who owned the estate after the master’s death. Mrs. Cosgrove was driven to extreme measures by jealousy when she discovered that Mr. Cosgrove had been having sex with enslaved women on the estate. Their marital strife split up the families of the enslaved women and cost Mrs. Cosgrove her life and Mr. Cosgrove his peaceful conscience.
In North Carolina, another enslaved woman named Maria grows jealous of Hannah’s position. After ingratiating herself with Mrs. Wheeler and framing Hannah for spreading malicious gossip about Mrs. Wheeler, Maria supplants Hannah. As punishment for the gossip (of which Hannah is innocent), Mrs. Wheeler declares that Hannah will henceforth be a field worker and will be forced to marry an uneducated field worker named Bill.
Horrified and determined to preserve her chastity at all costs, Hannah dresses as a boy and runs away, heading north. On the way she meets another runaway named Jacob and his sister, both of whom die before reaching freedom. Hannah miraculously runs into Aunt Hetty, who shelters her while she recovers her strength and helps her on the last leg of her journey. On the way, Hannah hears how Mr. Trappe finally got his comeuppance when he was murdered by members of a mixed-race family he was tormenting.
The story ends several years later, with Hannah looking back on her escape from the safety of New Jersey, where she has made a comfortable home, found a fulfilling career as a schoolteacher, married a man she loves of her own free will, and reunited with both her mother and Charlotte.
