Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. On her 11th birthday, Sarah Grimke is given ownership of Handful. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next 35 years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies, and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love.