The significant driving force of Sarah’s life is her hatred of slavery. With Handful’s encouragement, Sarah moves to Philadelphia, creating an independent life-first as a Quaker and later as an outspoken abolitionist and women’s rights advocate. In her teens, Sarah develops into an uncomfortable belle of Charleston society, but after her father’s death she rejects that life entirely.

Sarah’s chapters delineate her growth from her early life as an intelligent but uncertain, powerless child, at times unable to speak, into a powerful writer and speaker on abolition and women’s rights. Handful’s literacy fuels her desire for freedom and eventually helps lead to her freedom. However, these punishments cannot change the fact that Handful knows how to read. Sarah is banned from her father’s library, and Handful is whipped. This offense leads to significant consequences for both girls. Sarah, an unwilling slave owner, spends most of the day reading to Handful, eventually teaching her how to read and write.

Handful, about a year younger than Sarah, has compassion for Sarah’s speech impediment and appreciates Sarah’s repeated attempts to cover up for Handful’s many mistakes and errors. From this point on, Sarah feels responsible for Handful. Her inability to free Handful and her desire to accomplish something useful to better the world form her character at this young age. As an avid reader of her father’s extensive library, including law journals, Sarah understands what slavery means both in legal and human terms, and she attempts to set Handful free. Sarah and Handful’s friendship begins when Sarah refuses ownership of Handful. Divided into six parts by date, each part contains unnumbered chapters narrated from a first-person point of view, alternating between Hetty Handful Grimké and Sarah Grimké.

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