Chapter 1, The Overseer Summary

In this alternate-universe novel, Alvin is a young man beginning an apprenticeship in the Appalachian region of the United States. At the same time, a man named Cavil Planter begins to serve a new lord, whom he thinks is Jesus Christ.

It is the year 1810, in an alternate American frontier, where each race is gifted with a different kind of magic. Cavil Planter is a God-fearing man who owns a plantation in the northern region of Appalachia. Cavil always tries to obey God, and each time he buys slaves from Africa, he makes sure they are baptized immediately. He considers this necessary because, like his white contemporaries, he believes that black people are children of the devil who practice dangerous, evil witchcraft. Cavil's wife, Dolores, suffers from debilitating arthritis and is unable to bear children. This is a bitter...