The author draws upon the history of the 1832 slave rebellion in Jamaica to tell the story of July, a young slave girl, who is taken in as a house servant by her British overseer and subsequently abused.
A tale inspired by the years before and after nineteenth-century Jamaica's emancipation finds the willful slave Miss July moving into her mistress's great house, where she becomes a valuable confidante, learns to read, and witnesses the Baptist War.
