This picture book looks at the formative years of Frederick Douglass and the significant points in his emotional development. Cruelly separated from his mother, he grew up to be solitary and introspective, finding solace in books as a way of learning about the wider world - an appetite for freedom which plantation overseers regarded as dangerous and were determined to break. When Frederick fights back against their cruelty he sheds the role of 'slave' - for good.