In eighteenth-century West Africa, a boy raised by his blacksmith father and the Mother Elements--Wind, Fire, Water, and Earth--is captured and taken to America as a slave.

In 1619, twenty Africans stepped foot on American soil. They came not as slaves, but as indentured servants knowing that if they could hold on and finish out their sentences, they would be free. They came with dreams of the future and a vision of life as good as any other person's, black or white. Who were these people? How did they get here? What happened to them? Much of the information and stories about them are incomplete, even their names have...