Henry Shackleford

Henry Shackleford is the narrator and the main character of the novel. The entire novel apart from the prologue is told from his point of view as a very old, light-skinned black man telling about his experiences as a boy in slavery times. The story's action encompasses Henry's life from about age ten to thirteen. (As a slave, he is uncertain of his true age.) He is known by almost all of the characters in the novel by the name of Henrietta and/or Little Onion. The story begins when Henry is ten years old, enslaved with his father and other relatives by a tavern owner and prominent business owner in a town on the Kansas frontier. His mother died giving birth to Henry. John Brown comes into the tavern and gets into a confrontation with his owner, which results in the accidental death of Henry's father...