Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice.
Exposition
Liberation Lost
It's no accident that Chains begins with the game-changing event of Mary Finch's death. Ruth and Isabel's mother has told them that the day their mistress dies is the day they'll be free, as stated in her will. It's not quite that simple, though, since Mary's brother, Robert, is clearly prejudiced against the girls and her lawyer's nowhere to be found, so the promised freedom remains out of reach. We're therefore introduced to the main problem Isabel faces: her desire to be free and society's resistance to her dreams.
Rising Action
National Identity Crisis
Drama continues to build as Isabel and Ruth are sold to the Locktons, a merchant and his strict, controlling wife in New York City. While Isabel witnesses the daily growth of the rebels' discontent throughout the building of the Revolution, the Locktons are Loyalists, and she is expected to support the British as well. Basically, she's confused about who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in this whole thing. When Curzon tells her that his American owner might be able to sort out the situation with her and Ruth, Isabel begins spying for the rebels.
Climax
Discovery and Defiance
Isabel's story reaches the point of maximum intensity when Madam Lockton discovers that she's been taking food to American prisoners of war. She also ups the emotional stakes by revealing that Ruth is alive and well and being housed at the Lockton headquarters in Charleston. Rather than hand over the note she's delivering to an American commander, though, Isabel throws it into the fire, unleashing Madam's wrath.
Falling Action
We Have to Get Out of This Place
Isabel makes the decision once and for all to stop waiting for freedom to come to her and claim it for herself. She steals a pass from Lockton and fills it out, declaring herself a freed slave, and then she busts out of the house. Realizing the strength of her friendship with Curzon for the first time, she goes to the prison and gets him out by pretending he's dead from a fever. The two of them steal a boat and row across the river to New Jersey.
Resolution
A New Journey… To Be Continued
Because Chains is the first installment in a series, there's not as much resolution to the story as you might expect from a novel. Still, Isabel has accomplished her goal: She's rid herself of the Locktons, is a free slave, and has made it across the river to New Jersey. She has, in her words, "'crossed the river Jordan '" (45.44), overcoming the obstacles in her path to gain liberty from her chains.