Adelaide Shadd was born in southwestern Ontario in the first decade of the 20th century in an all-black town settled by fugitive slaves. Tragedy strikes more than once but she endures. Now an old woman, she lives a quiet existence in a trailer park not far from her birthplace. When five-year-old Sharla Cody is abandoned on her doorstep, she is forced to relive the unbearable sorrows of her past.