Samuel is a fourteen-year-old enslaved African American in Brooklyn in 1776 when the fighting between the British and the colonists reaches his doorstep. "Liberty ain't for Africans, " says fellow servants. "It got nothin' to do with us." But his friend Sana says, "Nobody here's gonna be free unless they take the risk." Soon the well-equipped Redcoats have trapped ragged American soldiers, who have no boats to escape, and a terrible storm blows up. Samuel, a strong boatman, must decide what he should do.