The story Rinaldi relates is emblematic of the fate of countless others whose lives were shaped by the scourge of slavery. The protagonist's mother, a daughter of free blacks in Philadelphia, was kidnapped from her parents by slave catchers. After the kidnapping, she was enslaved on a Virginia tobacco plantation for 37 years before making her escape to Gettysburg on the night before the historic Civil War battle erupted. She was nine months pregnant - and determined that her child would not be born a slave.