Martha's Boy

The story of Martha, a slave girl, fifteen years old, who works as a house servant in Greensboro, North Carolina. Running away to West Virginia in 1864, one year before the Civil War ends, she encounters a pregnant Confederate widow and a discharged Union soldier who is on his way home to Ohio. After the young widow gives birth to a baby boy in a tiny Appalachian mountain cabin, she dies of complications from the birth and the Union soldier is killed by Rebel raiders. Finding herself alone with a days-old infant, Martha makes the decision to go back to Greensboro and raise the boy herself. However, as the years pass, the boy's mental condition gradually deteriorates until Martha is forced to make another decision, one that will change her life forever.