2004: Lina Sparrow, an artist's daughter, is an ambitious young lawyer working on a historic class-action lawsuit seeking reparations for the descendants of American slaves. 1852: Josephine, a seventeen-year-old slave, tends to the mistress of a Virginia tobacco farm - an aspiring artist named Lu Anne Bell. Lina's search to find a plaintiff for her case will introduce her to Josephine's story. Was she the real talent behind her mistress's now-famous portraits?