Reunion island. Cassandre, a 12 year old girl, has just lost her father. One morning, she runs away on her own in direction of the Circus of Mafate. She wishes to honor the last will of her dead father. But on her way back home, she gets lost.

The life of Mrs. Desbassayns is exceptional in more than one way in the history of slavery on the island of Réunion. Married at the age of 15 to the forty-year-old Henri-Paulin Panon Desbassayns, this young Creole woman named Hombeline Gonneau immediately embarked on an extraordinary journey. She found herself, in fact, at the head of the most powerful landowning family...