Timbuktu, western Africa, 1706. Folashade, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a professor of linguistics, is sent south with her older sisters, Bibi and Adaeze, to endure the painful ceremony that a girl on the cusp of womanhood is expected to. In Djennâe on the banks of the Niger, the sisters' fate and that of their fellow Bambara is changed forever when they're kidnapped, marched toward grueling indignities on Goreâe Island, and eventually hauled aboard an English slaver bound for the Americas. Before they are inevitably separated, Folashade, Bibi, and Adaeze plot to keep their memories alive.