Freedom and enslavement are such important themes in the novel that the protagonist takes her name from them. Libertie (a variation on “liberty”) is a young African American girl who is born free during a time when slavery still exists in the United States. She must reckon with the fact that not everyone is so lucky when escaped slaves arrive at her mother’s medical practice as they make their way to freedom. Ben Daisy is unconscious in a coffin as he travels north, likening his journey to freedom and away from enslavement to a resurrection. To the young girl watching, becoming free is essentially a miracle that can breathe new life into a person. Freedom is not only a state of liberation but passage into a new life.

Nevertheless, there is a difference between those who are born free and those who escape enslavement. Men like Ben Daisy struggle to adjust to their lives as free men. Decades of enslavement and the cruel and vicious treatment their former owners inflicted on them have traumatized them. They cannot comprehend the idea of freedom—an idea that Libertie almost takes for granted—and don’t know what to do with it.