Two half-sisters, unknown to each other, will live out the destinies of Africans from the Ghana coast. One, Effia, will marry the top English officer at the slave castle where thousands of Africans passed through on their way to death or slavery. The other, Esi, is one of the captured. In vignettes filled with magical realism and harsh reality, Esi and Effia's descendants try to survive the lives they are born into on both continents.