Roselily is a mother of four children living in poverty in the small Mississippi town of Panther Burn, and working to support her family. Though her choices in life have been limited by her lack of money and her identity as a Black woman, she refuses to be defined by these things, and she is well aware of the ways she is oppressed by cultural institutions, including by marriage and religion. Her fourth child was taken to New England by his father, and the relationship she had with that man has shaped her doubts about her current relationship. Her son’s father felt she was unsophisticated, and in her mind his bias has taken root, suggesting that level of sophistication marks a true difference between Northern and Southern Black people. She has decided to marry the groom and to move to Chicago, but she has doubts about how she will thrive away from the South and without the need to work for a living. Though the groom’s love for her is a new experience in her largely loveless life, Roselily is not sure if she loves him in return or not. She is at a fulcrum point in her life: she knows that what is coming will be very different than what she has known, and she worries that the choice she has made is an act of submission more than it is an act of freedom.