When his father disappears near the Mexican border at the end of the Civil War, twelve-year-old Tyler decides to go after him and bring him home, acquiring on the journey a strange dog which he names Bigger.
Sixteen-year-old Rose Nolan arrives on Ellis Island in 1911 in the hopes of starting a new life, but after most of her family is sent back to Ireland, she must find her own way in a new country and fend for herself and her younger sister.
