Content Warning: Freewater depicts and references racism (including racist language), enslavement, physical abuse, sexual assault, body shaming, injury, violence against children, infant death, and animal death.

Freewater opens with Sanzi, a 12-year-old girl living in Freewater, a secret swamp community consisting of Black people, some of whom escaped enslavement; Sanzi herself was born in Freewater. It’s night, and Sanzi has snuck to the edge of Freewater. She’s not allowed to leave, but is curious about what lies beyond. She and other children often make up stories about outside dangers such as walking skeletons. Sanzi takes her sling, puts a rock in it, and fires. It goes so far that she can’t see where it lands.

The narration switches to first-person perspective for Homer’s sections, but other characters’ sections remain in third person. Twelve-year-old Homer and his seven-year-old sister, Ada, have just escaped Southerland plantation, where they were enslaved. The overseer, Stokes, is chasing them with dogs, one of which bites Homer’s ankle even though he used to feed the dogs as part of his work. He kicks the dog, and he and Ada run toward a river. They jump in even though they can’t swim.