I drew maps of the interior of the Grimké house and the work yard, and etched a loose outline of the thirty-five year span of the story on large sheets of paper, one for each of the book’s six parts. For the next year Sarah and Nina exchange letters and Sarah confides that the lack of racial equality even in abolitionist circles is very disheartening.

She is surprised to learn that Vesey and his wife helped Charlotte escape although they do not know where she is now. Handful is conveying a truth she knows only too well herself, that one’s mind can become a cage, too. Sarah has given Handful back to her mother Mary Grimke and Handful takes care of all of the sewing for the family in Charlotte's absence.

Other than Handful, Sarah’s other significant relationship is with her younger sister, Angelina (Nina).

In her teens, Sarah develops into an uncomfortable belle of Charleston society, but after her father’s death she rejects that life entirely. The scene brought to my mind theologian Nelle Morton’s words, that women “hear one another into speech,” and I thought, too, of theologian, Mary Daly, who said, “Only women hearing each other can create a counterworld to the prevailing reality. I’d read the Grimke sisters’ diaries and essays, and while they gave me an extraordinary glimpse into their lives, their writing was rendered in nineteenth century language, wrapped in rhetoric, piety and stilted phrases. I first came upon the Grimké sisters in 2007 while visiting Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Sarah is happy to think that Handful and Sky are coming North, imagining them living with the two Quaker women who offered the sisters shelter.What are some of the examples of Handful’s wit and sense of irony, and how do they help her cope with the burdens of slavery? You do your rebellions anyway you can," observes Handful when her mother is punished for stealing bright green cloth from her owner, in a narrative threaded with an intricate textile motif. Beginning with The Flying Nun, Sally Field has played a lifelong prominent role in my entertainment life!

Sarah describes her earliest memory of a slave getting whipped, an experience which caused Sarah to start to stutter. The development of Sarah’s freedom necessitated a whole series of “copper tub moments,” each one bringing her a little closer to breaking fully free.Contrast Handful’s relationship with her mother with the relationship between Sarah and the elder Mary Grimké. She pushes Sarah to do more and say more than she would under the influence only of her own more hesitant nature.