Point of View

The novel is told from multiple points of view as different chapters are told from the perspective of different characters. Among the characters whose perspectives are tracked are Homer, Ada, Nora, Ferdinand, Suleman, Sanzi, Billy, Anna, and Stokes. With the exception of Homer’s chapters, all of the chapters are told from the third person limited point of view. All the reader knows in each chapter is what the main character of that chapter knows. Because the reader reads from multiple points of view, however, they really do understand more than the narrators sometimes do, and as such, the novel as a whole can be said to told from a more omniscient point of view.

There are two stories being told: that of the escapees and the residents of Freewater and that of the people still living on the plantation, both Black and white. Neither...