Fourteen-year-old Maddie Bergamo has it all-looks, brains, mad moves on the basketball court, a cute crush, and true friends-and so far, her life seems right on track to make her eventual goals of the Olympics and a sports scholarship to her Ivy League dream school. But then life topples her neatly stacked plans, and Maddie finds herself in a fight for survival. As events spiral out of her control, Maddie receives an unexpected gift: an ancestor's extraordinary diary of life as a slave girl. And what Maddie discovers within those pages changes her world forever.