This portrayal of Douglass distinguishes him as one of the founders of American democracy instrumental in ending the institution of slavery from which he escapes to become a fierce abolitionist, gifted orator, and newspaper publisher of The North Star. Douglass collaborates with William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and the Underground Railroad, as well as Presidents Abraham Lincoln to Grover Cleveland and becomes the first African American to hold esteemed political positions such as U.S. Marshal of the District of Columbia and Minister to Haiti.
What makes this portrayal of Douglass unique is that it takes listeners beyond the public persona by also detailing the women in his life: Anna Murray Douglass, instrumental to his escape, becomes his wife and the mother to his five children; English abolitionist Julia Griffith works with Douglass until a scandalized community whispers about an extramarital affair and she returns to England; German journalist Ottilie Assing dies by suicide after years of waiting for Douglass to marry her and instead he marries a white abolitionist twenty years his junior, Helen Pitts, following Anna's death.
Frederick Douglass dedicated his life to racial equality and this novel is homage to him as a significant figure in U.S. and African American history.