Set in an America where a second civil war broke out in 1954 and the wrong side won. By 2030 a white-run government called the Order classifies Black people as Descendants of Slavery, and an algorithm hands out your job, your husband, and your address. DoS women get contracted to white men at fifteen, then matched with a Black husband later. Solenne Bonet is five years into a contract with Bastien Martin, the Order official who wrote the algorithm, living as his wife and half in love with him, waiting on a freedom he keeps not delivering. Running alongside her is the story she’s writing about Henriette, her own ancestor, kept as a concubine by the man who owned her in the 1800s. Rashad’s point is that the second story explains the first, and Solenne uses it to figure out how to run for Louisiana, the one state where DoS can be free.