In the mid-seventeenth century, John Bolt, a dark-skinned Jamaican freedman is implicated in the death of a prominent European on the island. Bolt flees to the hills where he survives and returns to Port Royal as Kwaku, an itinerant small farmer peddling his ground provisions from door to door, including the residence of English clergyman Emanuel Heath. Kwaku cultivates a relationship with Poinci, Heath's foster daughter who is later transferred...