The first chapter of Sugar introduces readers to River Road Plantation, a plantation in Louisiana that is “almost nothing but cane” (5). The narrator is Sugar, a 10-year-old Black girl who grew up at River Road. Sugar hates the sugar cane she’s been forced to harvest her whole life and refuses to eat it. She describes the long, laborious process of raising cane from start to finish, a process that left her and her “Ma always smell[ing] of sugar, sweat, and dirt” (4). The plantation consists of two rows of shacks (that once held enslaved people, but are now mostly empty), a mill, a stable, a henhouse, and a large home where the owners of the plantation, the Wills family, lives. For all of Sugar’s life, River Road Plantation, with its harsh conditions and cruel overseer, Tom, is the only place she’s known.

The novel begins in the winter of 1870, five years after Lincoln declared Emancipation at the end of the American Civil War. Most of the younger Black workers moved north, and now River Road needs more workers to stay afloat. Sugar and Ma are two of the youngest workers left, aside from Sugar’s friend, Lizzie.