In 1860, an 11-year-old African American girl named Libertie Sampson sees her mother “raise a man from the dead” (6). Libertie’s mother Cathy is an African American doctor in New York City. The man she “raises from the dead” arrives on a cart; a well-dressed woman and her son urgently carry the man’s coffin into the doctor’s office, where Cathy complains that they are late. They open the coffin, and Libertie stares at an African American man curled up inside. Cathy inserts grains into the man’s mouth and then slaps him on the back. The man wakes up, spluttering. The woman who brought the coffin, Elizabeth, explains that the revived man, Ben, and his sister are escaped slaves they are helping toward freedom. When Ben became unruly, they placed him in the coffin and knocked him unconscious with laudanum.

Ben stays at Cathy’s house. As he sleeps, Libertie listens to the conversation between Cathy and Elizabeth. The two women were childhood friends. Elizabeth married a Haitian man named Pierre, and they run a store in Philadelphia. Elizabeth tells Libertie stories from her school days with Cathy and worries about Libertie having inherited her father’s dark skin. Ben stirs in his sleep and mumbles the name Daisy.