The narrative unfurls with the storyteller endeavoring to unravel the origins of the tale. It all commenced, he recounts, as a missive to his brother—a letter he "began writing on a Greek island two years ago, but never finished, never sent." As he turns his thoughts to his absent sibling, he embarks on recounting "the story that came before the letter," a riveting saga about his great-great-great-grandmother, Sybela Owens. Her epic journey saw her break the chains of slavery and forge a new life in Pittsburgh, in what would one day become known as Homewood.

During the solemn gathering for his grandfather's farewell, whispers of Sybela and the genesis of Homewood floated among the elderly aunts. Through the resonant voices of Aunt May and Bess, the narrator weaves the tale of Sybela’s daring "escape, her five-hundred-mile flight through hostile, dangerous territory." The echoes of her bravery resound through generations.

Once a captive on a plantation near Cumberland, Maryland, Sybela seized her chance one fateful night. With her two young children in tow, she fled alongside Charlie Bell, the white son of her owner, who "stole" her away upon learning of his father's intent to sell her. It was the year 1859, with Sybela at the tender age of eighteen, and Charlie the father of her children. Together, they were destined to have eighteen more offspring. Eventually, as Aunt May recounts, "the other white men let Charlie know they didn’t want one of their kind living with no black woman so Charlie up and moved." The place he chose, "way up on Bruston Hill where nobody ’round trying to mind his business," marked the birthplace of Homewood.

Sybela's legacy was immortalized not just through her bold escape, but through her resolute refusal to internalize her enslavement. Revered across the plantation, she embodied exceptional dignity, reminiscent of another indomitable woman who safeguarded her bodily autonomy from the prevalent sexual predations of white masters by donning a protective cage.

As Aunt May and Mother Bess weave the tapestry of Sybela's past and the bygone days, the narrator's voice re-emerges in the closing reflections. Once more, he addresses his brother, whose last visage he recalls "in chains . . . old-time leg irons and wrist shackles and twenty pounds of iron dragged through the marble corridors in Fort Collins." He muses on whether a greater scale of justice prevails, pondering if the "Court could set your crime against Sybela’s, the price of our freedom against yours."