After serving Martha Washington for twenty years, Oney realizes that she will never be a part of General Washington's family at Mount Vernon. She must make a choice: does she stay where she is, comfortable with the family that she has known since she was born, or does she take liberty into her own hands and, like her father, become one of the Gone?

Harriet Hemings, rumored to be the daughter of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, one of his black slaves, struggles with the problems facing her--to escape from the velvet cage that is Monticello, or to stay, and thus remain a slave.

Relates the lives of Mary Todd Lincoln, raised in a wealthy Virginia family, and Lizzy Keckley, a dressmaker born a slave, as they grow up separately then become best friends when Mary's childhood dream of living in the White House comes true.