Thirteen-year-old Mary Harris doesn't easily believe in causes. When her older sister Sarah becomes the first girl of color to be admitted to the exclusive Canterbury Female Seminary, Mary is certain the Sarah's motives are not altogether honorable. Sarah claims to want the break barriers for her race, but Mary knows that she is only doing it for the glory, to be famous for being the first black girl in a white school.

When Quaker-raised Ms. Crandall, the head of the seminary, replaces the white girls at the school with black girls, Mary wonders if she has become a pawn of the abolitionists.

Soon things turn ugly. As the situation escalates and gains national attention, important people on both sides of the slavery crusade become involved, all with different reasons and motives. Mary doesn't know where to turn or whom to trust. She doesn't believe in good things being done for the wrong reasons.

But then Mary becomes involved in another cause, a cause that matters, something that she truly believes in for all the right reasons.

Based on the true story of the first school for black girls in Connecticut, this gripping historical tale delves beneath the surface and shows that heroes and heroines are not always what they appear to be.