What does it mean to be truly free?
Libertie is a free born Black. She is expected to follow her mother's footsteps into medicine. But she feels, as her mama isn't as dark as her and can pass as white, that she isn't free to make the choice to do it. She goes to college and nearly get through a year.
She makes in haste a man she thinks she could love and can take her away to Haiti and be the free woman she wants to be. But she finds in Haiti that she still is under her husband and still can't make her own choices.

This was a beautiful story about trying to find oneself in the world. I thought that for most of the book Libertie was passive and didn't fight for what she really wanted. She kind of just ran away instead of facing it head on (this shows as she stubbornly doesn't write her mother letters to let her know how she's getting on). She finally found her footing at the end but I wish we could have seen what that then led to.