Flight to Canada

This book has been very hard for me to follow, so far. I guess maybe if I had prior reading of Uncle Tom's Cabin and knew what it was about maybe I would understand what was going on.

A relationship in chapter 7 caught my attention when I was reading. The relationship between Cato and Swille. It appears int he beginning that Cato may just be a slave, but then the reader can get the notion that he is Swille's real son. A quesiotn that rises in my mind is if he is really his son, how does he have the nerve to say or do the things he does to him? How is asome one able to treat flesh and blood like that?

Similiar themes that I have noticed in books are community, power and control, bravery.