"They tell you one thing but you are not free." London in 1802 is a dangerous place for black people. Elizabeth d'Aviniere, the mixed race great-niece of the Lord Chief Justice, who had spent her childhood in his home, now fears for her own children's safety and yearns for her mother, an African-born enslaved woman.

The prize-winning Trinidadian novelist imagines the real life of Dido Belle, the mixed race girl brought up in the aristocratic home of England's Lord Chief Justice at the end of the 18th century.