Twelve-year-old Pascal can hardly believe his ears. His older, run-away brother has returned to the plantation with an amazing story: President Lincoln has freed the slaves. Not only that, each newly-freed family can have 40 acres of land and maybe a mule, just for the asking. Now all Pascal and his brother have to do is sneak away from their angry master¿and find out where the government is giving away farmland. But as they search, they still must hide from men who would force them back to slavery. Will Pascal ever know true freedom?

The granddaughter of slaves on Robert E. Lee¿s Virginia estate, Harriette Gillem Robinet bases this story on research and oral stories of slavery. Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule sheds new light on the little understood time of Reconstruction in the South. Narrator Andrea Johnson vividly brings to life the adventures that could have happened to one small group of African Americans.