Sarah, at age four, witnesses the whipping of a Grimké family slave and loses the ability to speak.

Sarah receives Handful as an 11th birthday present and immediately tries to write a legal document to free her.

Charlotte extracts a solemn promise from Sarah that she will one day help Handful gain her freedom.

Sarah's secret lessons teaching Handful to read are discovered, and both girls receive severe punishments.

Charlotte refuses to step aside on a sidewalk for a white woman, is seized by the City Guard, and vanishes.

After learning her engagement was a cruel scheme, Sarah vows never to marry and dedicates her life to God.

Handful is sent to the Work House by Missus and is permanently maimed when her foot is caught in the treadmill.

Sarah travels north with her ailing father, who dies before they can return to Charleston.

After her father's death, Sarah chooses to remain in Philadelphia and begin an independent life.

Charlotte reappears at the Grimké household with a daughter named Sky after fourteen years of absence.

Denmark Vesey's planned slave revolt is uncovered and he is arrested, tried, and sentenced to death.

Nina arrives in Philadelphia and joins Sarah in dedicating her life to the abolitionist cause.

Sarah and Nina refuse to recant Nina's published anti-slavery letter and are expelled from their Quaker community.

Anti-Slavery Society men pressure Sarah and Nina to stop speaking to mixed audiences and both women flatly refuse.

Sarah returns to Charleston and helps Handful and Sky escape north, disguised as mourning widows aboard a steamboat.

Pool 1 traces the central arc of Sarah and Handful's relationship from its beginning on Sarah's birthday to its culmination in freedom. Beginning with the childhood trauma that shapes Sarah's hatred of slavery and the birthday gift that binds the two girls together, the pool follows Sarah's failed attempts to free Handful and the punishments that define both their early lives. As Sarah evolves from a powerless Charleston belle into an independent Quaker abolitionist, Handful endures the brutal realities of slavery, including her permanent maiming in the Work House. The parallel journeys of both women through loss, transformation, and growing determination converge when Sarah and Nina together challenge the abolitionist establishment. Sarah ultimately fulfills the promise made to Charlotte decades earlier, smuggling Handful and her sister Sky to freedom in the novel's climax.

The headline events of Handful and Sarah's intertwined lives.

Charlotte is given the cruel one-legged punishment for confessing to theft in order to cover for Handful's disobedience.

Charlotte tells Handful the history of their family, tracing their lineage to the Fon people of Africa.

Sarah asks to be named godmother to the new baby in her family, and her mother agrees.

Charlotte begins forging written passes so she can slip away from the house and earn money toward buying their freedom.

Charlotte introduces Handful to Denmark Vesey, a free Black man who speaks openly about freedom for all enslaved people.

Handful stays up through the night sewing her missing mother's scattered story quilt squares together into a single quilt.

Handful manipulates Sarah into obtaining a written pass so she can attend Denmark Vesey's African Methodist Episcopal church.

Nina refuses to be confirmed in the Episcopal Church, defying her family's enormous pressure and her mother's anger.

Denmark Vesey remains beside Handful in the Work House out of solidarity rather than paying his fine to be released.

Handful discovers that Charlotte was kidnapped by a slave poacher and did not willingly abandon her daughter.

Sarah falls in love with Israel Morris while living with his family outside of Philadelphia.

Charlotte signals her emotional recovery after returning to the Grimké house by picking up her needle and beginning a new story quilt square.

Sarah and Nina write anti-slavery pamphlets addressed to Southern women and clergy while sheltering at Sarah Mapps Douglass's home.

Handful is whipped after a mob forces her to surrender her whiskey and she returns home late and empty-handed.

Missus refuses Sarah's request to purchase Handful and Sky's freedom, offering only to free them in her will.

Pool 2 explores the significant secondary events that enrich and complicate the main narrative, beginning with Charlotte's brutal punishment and the family history she imparts to Handful. These events track the quieter rebellions and formative relationships — Charlotte's clandestine money-saving scheme, Handful's introduction to Denmark Vesey, and Nina's early defiance of her family's expectations. The middle of the pool focuses on bonds of loyalty tested by separation and suffering, including Denmark Vesey's solidarity with Handful in the Work House and Handful's discovery of what truly happened to her mother. As Sarah and Nina's abolitionist work intensifies in the North, Handful's situation worsens under little missus's harsh rule, driving both storylines toward their inevitable collision. The pool closes as Missus delivers her final cruel refusal, making the coming escape unavoidable.

The secondary moments that shape Handful and Sarah's worlds.

John Grimké tears up the manumission document Sarah wrote, making clear she has no power to free Handful.

Sarah and Handful share their deepest dreams and personal secrets with each other during a secret rooftop tea party.

Handful and Charlotte perform a ritual together, placing their spirits in a tree so they may live with birds and learn to fly.

Thomas Grimké exposes Burke Williams for making false engagements with multiple young women as a scheme to seduce them.

Handful returns the polished silver fleur de lis button to Sarah after her engagement collapses.

Sarah returns to Charleston dressed in Quaker gray and warns Handful that the slave revolt plot has been exposed to the authorities.

Handful and Goodis become lovers the night before she risks her life by stealing bullet molds from the city armory.

Handful steals bullet molds from the city armory to help supply Denmark Vesey's planned uprising.

Handful escapes the Grimké house to follow Denmark Vesey's wagon and witnesses his public hanging.

Sarah and her dying father reconcile and he acknowledges that greed kept him complicit in slavery despite his own hatred of it.

A conversation with Lucretia Mott crystallizes Sarah's understanding that she was born to dedicate her life to fighting slavery.

Israel Morris proposes marriage but demands Sarah give up her abolitionist ambitions, and she turns him down without hesitation.

Little missus discovers Charlotte's story quilt, and Handful resolves that she and Sky must escape or die trying.

Handful's letter announcing her plan to flee north is delivered to Sarah at Nina and Theodore Weld's wedding celebration.

Handful and Sky board the northbound steamboat with Sarah, and Handful imagines their black mourning veils flapping like wings.

Pool 3 focuses on the pivotal revelations and choices that permanently alter the course of Handful and Sarah's lives. From John Grimké's crushing of Sarah's very first act of defiance to the rooftop tea party where both girls first exchange their truest selves, the early events establish the emotional stakes of the entire novel. The middle events track Handful's transformation from a watchful young woman into a courageous rebel, as she steals weapons for a slave revolt and bears witness to Denmark Vesey's execution. On Sarah's side, the turning points trace her shedding of every conventional expectation, from a conversation that clarifies her life's purpose to her refusal of a comfortable marriage that would silence her work. The pool closes with the discovery that forces Handful's hand, the letter that calls Sarah back to Charleston, and the image of two women sailing toward freedom with veils that beat like wings.