This is a novel based on an incident in the life of Charles Willson Peale, Early American painter, Revolutionary War veteran, inventor, museum founder, farmer. Although he opposed slavery publicly, Peale accepted an enslaved family into his household as payment for a debt. He freed the husband and wife after a few years, but held their son, Moses Williams, until he was 26, and taught him to be a profile cutter, working in his Philadelphia natural history museum. In imagining the Peale family's life on an 18th-century farm, the book explores ethics and inclusion: the contradictions at the heart of this country.