Where will they hear the story if not from you - the story of being stolen away from family? Of writing an advertisement seeking any word of loved ones, and hoping to save up the fifty cents to have it printed in the Southwestern paper, so that it might travel through all the nearby states and territories? How will they understand the desperate need to finally know, Are my people out there, somewhere?
-- The Teacher (“Prologue”)

Importance: An unnamed teacher encourages her student to tell her story to the people gathered. She tells this student that she is the only one who can tell this story, if she does not tell it, it will go unheard.

All my mama’s children been carried off one by one and two by two. Aunt Jenny Angel and three of her four girls, gone, too. Sold away in trader yards like this one, from south Louisiana almost...
-- Narrator - Hannie (Chapter 1)