1792-1865

At the request of his fellow slave Granny Judith, Christmas John risks his life to take runaways across a river from Kentucky to Ohio. Based on slave narratives recorded in the 1930s.

In 1838, as the nation struggles with issues of slavery, seventeen-year-old Stephen Bishop serves his master as a guide in Kentucky's Mammoth Cave and spends his free time exploring and discovering new passages and rooms.

Charlotte Brown, a slave who is a maid at Mammoth Cave Hotel in 1839, is drawn to the adventurous spirit of eighteen-year-old tour guide Stephen Bishop, a slave whose knowledge of the Kentucky cave system has given him a measure of freedom, and she hopes her trust in him is not misplaced when she learns that runaway slaves are arriving at the hotel in need of help.

At the request of his fellow slave Granny Judith, Christmas John risks his life to take runaways across a river from Kentucky to Ohio. Based on slave narratives recorded in the 1930s.