James Jackson Jr., the son of the plantation owner, and Easter, a slave who works in the weaving house, have both grown up on the estate, and gradually their feelings for each other have developed into romance.

James Jackson Sr., an Irish immigrant who has accumulated considerable wealth, becomes ill and soon dies, leaving his wife Sally a widow.

Meanwhile, Sally encourages James Jr. to marry the respectable and wealthy heiress Elizabeth "Lizzie" Perkins, the daughter of a neighboring planter.

As the Jackson family dine with acquaintances, Captain Jack announces that a slave child has been born, and assures James, "Easter's doing just fine".

In the next year, 1861, Alabama secedes from the United States, the North declares war against the South, and James enters the Confederate Army and heads northward.

On July 21, 1861, during the First Battle of Bull Run, in Prince William County, Virginia, near Manassas, James sustains an injury, and he is discharged and sent back home.

Union soldiers loot and plunder, wantonly destroy property, insult the ladies and brutalize the slaves, for whose freedom they have claimed to be fighting.

Parson Dick, another slave there, warns Queen about the difficulties awaiting mulattoes, quadroons, and octoroons in the new free society.

Mr. Henderson, the former overseer, and his wife have left the Jackson plantation, and they now run a nearby grocery store, where young redneck white men hang out, and James trades.

After an unpleasant confrontation at the store with Mrs. Henderson and several of the rednecks, Queen runs away and hides until the next morning; tired and hungry, she returns home, only to be berated for her absence.

Queen decides to leave the estate; as she visits the grave of her mother, Sally bids her goodbye and hands her a sum of money.

In Florence, Queen realizes how easily she can "pass" as a white lady; she buys a one-way stagecoach ticket and travels to Charleston, South Carolina.

At a charitable soup kitchen, Queen meets Alice, a fair-skinned young "colored" lady who is passing as white.

Queen first seeks an abortion, then decides to keep the child; She confronts Davis, who invites her to meet him at the railway station, presumably to head north.

At a crossroads store and lunchroom, Queen meets Mrs. Benson, an upper-middle-class white mother of a 15-month-old son, for whom she needs a wet nurse.

The next morning, Queen finds Davis' hanged and charred body; Abner is inside a wooden chicken cage at his father's feet.

In the next scene, Queen and Abner, now a toddler of about two years, board a small wooden ferryboat near Savannah, Hardin County, Tennessee, where they meet its operator, Alec Haley, and his son, Henry.

When he completes the sixth grade, the point at which black boys in the South typically (in the subject setting) drop out of school to start full-time work in the fields, as did Henry and Abner, Simon's teacher comments to Queen that he is "the best student in the district".

One day, Queen takes Abner and Simon back to the Forks of Cypress, the Jackson plantation, to show them where she was raised and to share her memories of her childhood.

Anxious and upset, Queen begins stoking the wood-fired cast-iron cookstove; an accidental fire ignites her long dress; she runs out of the house and into the surrounding woodland.

However, this last event in the series of accumulated tragic experiences of her past life causes her to have a mental breakdown; Alec commits her to a mental-health institution, in Bolivar, Tennessee, about 50 miles from home.

They take Abner and Simon on the ferryboat across the Tennessee River stream, and place them aboard a carriage bound for Memphis.