The novel begins on Faith Plantation, a sugar cane plantation on the island of Barbados in 1830. The protagonist, Wash, is 10 or 11 years old when his first master dies. Along with Wash’s friend and surrogate mother Big Kit, Wash watches the coffin containing the old master leave the plantation and wonders what is to come.

Instead of selling Faith Plantation, the former master’s nephew inherits it and travels to the plantation to oversee its operations. The new master, Erasmus, disembarks from his carriage for the first time, and his cruel countenance frightens Wash. Having grown up a slave on a plantation, Wash is already wise to the ways of the world and knows “the nature of evil,” particularly when it comes to white masters (5). Narrating the events of the chapter from a later date, Wash believes that it was this moment that Big Kit “determined, calmly and with love, to kill herself and me” (5).

Wash describes his upbringing and relationship with Big Kit. At five years old, he was sent to live with Big Kit and other slaves in a “brutal hut” in the slave quarters of the plantation (6).