Meg records in her diary the events from July to November of 1856, when her family is reunited and must face challenges from fires to pro-slavery border ruffians who are trying to take over Kansas Territory.
Meg continues to write in her diary about her family's adventures in the Kansas prairie in 1856 as they try to return to a more normal life after surviving a cholera epidemic, separation, and invading Border Ruffians.
After the death of his brother, eight-year-old Bill Cody and his family set out from Iowa to make a new home for themselves in the volatile Kansas Territory.
With the threat of further violence from pro-slavery border ruffians ever-present, nine-year-old Bill must run the farm, even after his father comes home to recuperate from his knife wound, and go to school.
Thirteen-year-old Dana investigates a mystery involving the old Kansas house that her parents have turned into a bed and breakfast business; in a parallel story, a Quaker boy living in the house in 1857 sets out to help some fugitive slaves to freedom.
Charlie, having returned home alone after his father decided to stay in Lawrence, Kansas to help defend the town from pro-slave ruffians, must prove himself responsible when his family is threatened by a snow storm.
While tension over slavery grows in Kansas Territory, causing the Underground Railroad to shut down, and Papa is away, hiding from a false arrest, Charlie and his family risk everything to hide a runaway slave girl in their cabin.
Charlie Keller has trouble feeling at home after his abolitionist father, wanting to cast a vote for freedom, moves his family from Massachusetts to the Kansas Territory which is on the verge of deciding whether to enter the Union as a free or a slave state.
Excerpts from diaries and letters help chronicle the events which lead to the formation of the Kansas Territory and describe how abolitionists and slaveowners tried to influence whether it would become a slave state or free.
