<p><b>''A beautiful and important book'' <i>The Times</i></b><br><b><br> On the day that Jacob, an Anglo-Dutch trader, agrees to accept a slave in lieu of payment for a debt from a plantation owner, little Florens''s life changes irrevocably. </b><br><br> With her keen intelligence and passion for wearing the cast-off shoes of her mistress, Florens has never blurred into the background and now at the age of eight she is uprooted from her family to begin a new life with a new master. She ends up part of Jacob''s household, along with his wife Rebekka, Lina their Native American servant, and the enigmatic Sorrow who was rescued from a shipwreck. <br><br>Together these women face the trials of their harsh environment as Jacob attempts to carve out a place for himself in the brutally unforgiving landscape of North America in the seventeenth century.<br><br><b>¿Toni Morrison is the greatest chronicler of the American experience that we have ever known¿ Tayari Jones, <i>New York Times</i></b