[2] Anthropologists discover a remnant of ancestral genus Australopithecus; pitiful creatures enslaved by a backward African village that is shunned by its neighbors for its cruel practices.

The first section is about her and her colleagues assessing the implications while they try to keep the discovery a secret, interspersed with bits from the point of view of an Australopithecus kept as a slave in an isolated village.

Marchando is visiting her family during Thanksgiving, recovering from a recent, bitter divorce, prompting her to seek time alone to explore an attic.

Marchando and the translator question the chief about stories of white men coming long ago to buy 'worker beasts' from the village and if they might help find where such 'beasts' lived.

After an agreement for information is arranged, a young, dirty, naked and malnourished Australopithecus boisei female is led by collar and leash into the hut and handed over as purchased property.

As the translator explains that undoing the exchange with the chief would prove insulting & dangerous, Marchando and her team leave with the nervous, but otherwise docile female.

The doctor and team set about making plans to return to the port city and sedate the female while arrangements are made to transition her to Europe and eventually the United States.

They're seen variously as better substitutes for chimpanzees in medical testing, an easily trained labor force, potentially living organ banks, essentially a future slave race to be considered as beasts or property.

[4] The story of Thursday's life and her species, their thoughts, their treatment, emotions and intelligence is at first presented without a context of time, era or location.

Indeed the first passages devoted to Thursday's point of view and thoughts are easily taken as perhaps a young African girl introduced to the hardships of life on a plantation in the American South during the early 1800s.

The hardships endured by Thursday, beatings, foul food & water, cold nights spent sleeping outdoors and separation from family members are direct parallels to the Treatment of slaves in the United States before the American Civil War.

Once introduced to sign language and encouraged to communicate, learn and interact with humans as more than animal awakens thoughts of self identify in Thursday.

Most damning of all is the discovery of historical advertisements attempting to sell Thursday's ancestors as a "new type slave, which cannot be considered worthy of the protections by the Northern States".

Showing that slave traders, owners and masters had full knowledge of their guilt and were desperate to find replacement workers if the practice of slavery is eventually abolished.

Marchando recognizes the child like intelligence and compassion in Thursday and the prospect of the doctor inadvertently beginning a new era of slave ownership terrifies her.