Having lost their home when the Revolutionary War reached their part of rural Pennsylvania, Thomas and his family start a new life running an inn in Philadelphia, where Thomas finds new danger that takes him into captivity among the Iroquois.
In the early days of the Civil War, Joseph must decide whether to defend his stepfather's abolitionist and pro-Union beliefs or side with the slave owners and Southern rights supporters in his home town of Branson Mills, Kentucky.
After his stepfather becomes an abolitionist, ten-year-old Joseph struggles with his own thoughts about slavery as he sees its divisive power in his small Kentucky town.
In the mid-nineteenth century, teenager Lee Chin and his father leave China for California to work on the transcontinental railroad, where Lee defies his father's wishes and saves money to free his younger sister from slavery in China, then brings her to join him in beginning a new life in America. Includes historical note about the Chinese who helped build the transcontinental railroad.
After seizing control of a British war ship, Hannah Pritchard, masquerading as a boy, and her pirate crewmates discover treasure, but are captured and imprisoned by British soldiers and endure torture and sickness before escaping.
After her parents and brother are killed by Loyalists, fourteen-year-old Hannah leaves their farm and eventually, disguised as a boy, joins a pirate ship that preys on other ships to get supplies for the American Revolution.
In the early years of the Revolutionary War, eleven-year-old Thomas and his family escape a bloody massacre at Wyoming Valley and endure innumerable hardships as they try to make their way to Philadelphia.
