Johnny Holt Jr comes home to Kentucky for the summer to find his father, JJ has made alliances with a notorious slave owner, Spanish-born Edmond Maguerro to turn Holt Lands into a million-dollar plantation. Johnny is indifferent, much as he hates the idea because of his liberal views about slavery, but doesn't involve himself until he meets Elisa, one of his father's new slaves. Johnny is smitten and convinced Elisa belongs with him in New York, where he is a law student at a prestigious college, or in any other world where the society is color-blind. And he goes all out to remove her from slavery and into that world. Set in the 1800s American slave era, I loved a slave follows the story of two lovers as they make their way through circumstances beyond their control to escape their reality and live in a world best imagined.