Summary

The opening section is A Prologue, “In Which I Am Born and Someone Tries to Murder Me.” Jane McKeene talks about the day she was born at Rose Hill, a plantation in Haller County, Kentucky. The midwife was horrified when the mistress of the plantation, Ophelia McKeene, gave birth to a dark-skinned baby. The midwife's first reaction was that she should kill the child to save the woman from the shame. A servant in the household, a black woman named Auntie Aggie, took Jane from the midwife and saved the newborn's life. Jane knows that she might have had one of several futures, including taking Auntie Aggie's place as “House Negro” at Rose Hill. However, two days after Jane's birth, “the dead rose up and started to walk on a battlefield in a small town in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg” (2).

The next page...