Neither Bond Nor Free draws heavily on real events and from the lives of historical figures to weave a tale of suffering and redemption in antebellum America. Across a violent landscape of virulent racial prejudice and hatred pitted against the aid and protection of free black communities and abolitionists of the Underground Railroad, self-emancipated refugees from the South's Peculiar Institution navigate their way north to freedom in Canada. One highly literate mulatto's escape from slavery intersects closely with the lives of free blacks and Quakers in a small Indiana community until the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 shatters his hopes but not his indomitable desire to be free. In his adventures and struggle to fully secure his freedom, he makes surprising discoveries about the nature of suffering and his own humanity.