Henry Townsend, a Black slaveowner, dies at age 31, leaving behind 33 slaves and 55 acres of land.

Caldonia addresses Henry's slaves after his death, promising them that nothing in their lives will change.

Augustus and Mildred hide the slave Rita inside a shipping crate of walking sticks to help her escape to New York.

Sheriff Patterson resigns over his failure to control runaway slaves, and John Skiffington is appointed sheriff in his place.

Henry tells his parents he has purchased a slave named Moses to help him build his house.

Augustus strikes Henry with a walking stick and banishes him from the family home forever.

William Robbins discovers Henry and Moses playing together and firmly instructs Henry to act as a proper master.

William Robbins purchases Moses from the French prisoner Broussard, who is later convicted of murder and hanged.

Caldonia's mother Maude reveals she poisoned her husband Tilmon with arsenic to stop him from freeing their slaves.

Slave patrollers Travis and Oden tear up and eat Augustus's free papers, then sell him to a passing slave trader.

Moses convinces Alice, Priscilla, and his son Jamie to escape the plantation, promising he will follow them later.

Moses confronts Caldonia demanding his freedom, and house slave Loretta holds a knife to his neck until he leaves.

Hillard Ulster fatally shoots Augustus for refusing to submit to slavery; Augustus's spirit travels to Virginia to kiss Mildred.

John Skiffington accidentally shoots Mildred dead at her home; Counsel Skiffington then murders John and steals his gold.

Calvin writes to Caldonia describing Alice's stunning tapestries of Manchester County and the plantation, now displayed in Washington, DC.

The Known World opens with the death of Henry Townsend, a Black slaveowner in antebellum Virginia, and follows the consequences that ripple across his plantation and family. His widow Caldonia vows to maintain slavery, devastating his father Augustus, who had spent years buying his family out of bondage. As Henry's past is revealed, the reader sees how deeply he absorbed the values of his white mentor William Robbins, purchasing slaves even after achieving his own freedom. The patrollers' destruction of Augustus's free papers and his sale into slavery expose how fragile freedom was even for free Black people. Back on the plantation, overseer Moses schemes to replace Henry as Caldonia's husband, a delusion that ends violently when she rejects him and he flees. The novel closes with the murders of Mildred and John Skiffington, and Calvin's letter announcing that escaped slaves are thriving and free in Washington, DC.

The rise and fall of Henry Townsend's slave plantation.

Moses spends two weeks coming to terms with the fact that his new master Henry is a Black man who truly owns him.

Cousin Counsel and his wife give John and Winifred Skiffington a nine-year-old slave girl named Minerva as a wedding gift.

Henry hires a man to cut off part of Elias's ear as punishment for attempting to escape the plantation.

Elias carves a crude wooden comb and gives it to Celeste as a gift, causing her to weep.

Elias asks Henry's permission to marry Celeste; Henry secretly celebrates because love will anchor Elias to the plantation.

William Robbins suffers an epileptic seizure at Henry's home while arriving to pay his respects after Henry's death.

Henry apprentices as a shoemaker at William Robbins's home, eventually surpassing his teacher and earning money toward land.

Henry and Moses wrestle playfully in the dirt together until William Robbins arrives on horseback and rebukes Henry.

The historian Anderson Frazier interviews Fern Elston for a pamphlet he is writing about Black slaveowners in the antebellum South.

Moses begs William Robbins not to separate him from a woman named Bessie when William purchases him from Broussard.

Stamford survives a brutal beating by Clement and later runs toward a lightning bolt, hoping to be killed.

Fern Elston purchases the wandering slave Jebediah Dickinson from Reverend Mann to prevent him from being taken away and beaten.

After Moses abandons his duties, Caldonia places Elias in charge of overseeing the plantation's remaining slaves.

After five slaves disappear, Caldonia purchases insurance on her remaining slaves from Atlas Life, Casualty and Assurance Company.

Minerva permanently leaves Winifred Skiffington in Philadelphia, hardened by a poster that refers to her as a lost loved one.

This pool follows the supporting characters and secondary storylines that give the world of The Known World its full texture. Moses's bewilderment at being owned by a Black man sets the novel's central irony in motion, while John Skiffington's acceptance of young Minerva as a wedding gift shows how deeply even reluctant participants were entangled in slavery. Elias and Celeste's love story unfolds through small, tender moments — a carved comb, a marriage request — even as Henry coldly exploits their bond to prevent Elias from escaping again. William Robbins's purchase of Moses from the prisoner Broussard reveals the cold commerce behind every human relationship in the slave economy. Minor figures like Stamford, Jebediah Dickinson, and the historian Frazier add moral complexity, each wrestling with the system's demands in their own way. The pool ends with Caldonia buying insurance on her remaining slaves and Minerva's quiet act of self-liberation on the streets of Philadelphia.

The secondary lives and quiet struggles inside the plantation world.

Caldonia learns that Henry has died and faces the task of managing the plantation and its slaves alone.

Augustus listens to Caldonia's address to the slaves and realizes she will never free them as he had hoped.

A twelve-year-old slave named Luke dies after being hired out to a neighboring farm and worked to death.

Henry comforts William Robbins's frightened Black children after a violent confrontation in Richmond, earning William's complete and lasting trust.

William Robbins arranges for Henry to study with teacher Fern Elston, where Henry meets his future wife Caldonia.

Smallpox wipes out everyone on Counsel Skiffington's plantation; Counsel burns all the bodies and every structure to the ground.

Counsel is so unsettled by a peaceful multicultural group of travelers he encounters in Texas that he shoots his own horse.

Fern changes her mind about freeing Jebediah Dickinson after he reveals in a heated argument that her husband has been unfaithful.

Moses demands that Alice help his family escape; she instantly drops all pretense of madness and becomes calm and deliberate.

Mildred Townsend travels to the sheriff's office with Caldonia and Fern Elston to report Augustus's disappearance, but Counsel ignores them.

At a dinner party at Caldonia's home, Fern and the other guests debate which side they should choose in the coming war.

Moses forces a heavily pregnant Celeste to work in the fields; she collapses and loses her unborn child.

Moses stops reporting for work and simply walks away from the plantation, abandoning his role as overseer entirely.

Slave patrollers hobble Moses by slicing his Achilles tendon, crippling him permanently after Counsel falsely blames him for killing John.

Moses, permanently crippled and broken, spends the rest of his life on Caldonia's plantation while Celeste ensures he is fed.

This pool traces the key revelations and turning points that alter the fates of every character in the novel. Augustus's silent grief at Caldonia's refusal to free the slaves encapsulates the book's central tragedy, as does young Luke's death — proof that even a supposedly benevolent master could destroy a child. Henry's transformation from enslaved boy to slaveowner is crystallized in his Richmond journey with William and his formal education under Fern Elston. The destruction of Counsel's plantation and his terror of multicultural Texas expose how completely the boundaries of the known world shaped every inhabitant's imagination. In the novel's final movement, Alice's feigned madness is exposed as deliberate strategy, dinner guests debate the coming war, and Moses's hunger for power costs him his family, his freedom, and his body. The pool closes with Moses permanently crippled and dependent on Caldonia's plantation, a final image of a man destroyed by a world he could never truly enter.

The decisions, discoveries, and moments of reckoning that define every character's fate.