Orphaned 1840s Mississippi sisters Kate, Jenny and Susan Blaine work their subsistence farm themselves. Young Susie witnesses a brutal, unspeakable act by a drunken plantation overseer, followed later by the sisters harboring a young runaway slave girl with scars and only a memorized name. They find an ally in a planter's wife, who helps them in the unlikely work of aiding a secret abolitionist movement. The punishment for helping is hanging, but the three are resourceful, armed and deadly. For years, they are undetected in this nighttime smuggling, doing whatever is necessary in what they see as God's work. Their charges are varied: a valued blacksmith, field hands, maids, even an aging butler, all risking everything to gain the common goal of precious freedom. War comes, and they must survive against raiding, foraging, even hiding wounded soldiers of both sides.