Journey to Sychar is a fictionalized biography of a fourteen-year-old girl's capture and her life on a plantation. Penda is a young woman born in Lunda village, Africa. She is captured along with some members of her village, and then sold to a sugarcane planter in the Caribbean. The girl and two of her friends are sold to a plantation called Coconut Palms in the parish of Saint Philip, Barbados. The story is not of the young woman exclusively but about her master, mistress, and other prominent figures on the plantation and how their daily interactions shaped her way of reasoning and level of maturity. Examples are Mammie, an old slave who introduced her to life-changing truths through an unknown God called Jesus, Bassa the Overseer, described as the meanest man alive, and Preacher Brown who preached select passages from the Bible to instill obedience.
The young girl's way off the plantation is afforded by her mistress who becomes mentally ill following several miscarriages and is sent back to Lancashire, England. The girl accompanies her as a nursemaid, where she learns about the culture of England. The story is narrated in some parts.
Differences in culture, speech, and money are some of the challenges the young girl faces with courage and calm beyond her age and status.
The use of biblical quotes gives the reader a glimpse of the main character's spiritual development and how it is used to point out the hypocrisy of the plantation preachers at church gatherings on Sundays. The author hopes that this book is neither despairing nor bitter to the reader.