Treemonisha returns to the plantation of her parents after being educated by a white woman. At the celebration of her return, she decides to decorate her hat with leaves from a nearby tree. Her mother, Monisha, tells her that she cannot take leaves from that tree, under which she found her, revealing that she and Ned adopted her. When she goes to find different leaves, she does not return. Lucy witnesses her abduction by cronies of Simon, a conjurer who follows a mixture of ancestral folk-wisdom and local religious beliefs who wants to sacrifice her to a den of wasps. Remus, indebted to Treemonisha, who taught him to read and write, disguises himself as a scarecrow and sets out to free her. After a difficult journey home, witnessing the lot of other African-Americans, she returns home to find herself defending those who captured her from the assault of her family and friends.
