In 1863, eleven-year-old Peg Kelly is drawn into the dangerous activities of a mysterious young woman who had come to her home in Missouri after fleeing the raid of William Quantrill and his raiders on Lawrence, Kansas.
After being taken in by Captain Taylor and his wife in Kansas, twelve-year-old Mike Kelly and his friend Todd Blakely join the Union army as musicians and see the horrors of war firsthand in Missouri.
In 1856, having traveled with his young sister from New York to a foster home on a farm in Missouri, ten-year-old Danny plots to get his foster father to send for and marry his mother.
Eleven-year-old Michael Patrick Kelly from New York City is sent to a foster home, a Missouri farm with a sadistic owner, a bullying son, and a number of secrets, one of which may be murder.
Deeply unhappy about her family's separation because of poverty, Megan gradually finds contentment and purpose in her new home on the Kansas prairie with a kind and loving adopted family.