Deeply unhappy about the separation of her family because of poverty, twelve-year-old Megan gradually finds contentment and purpose in her new home on the Kansas prairie with a kind and loving adopted family.
In 1860, when their widowed mother can no longer support them, six siblings are sent on the orphan train by the Children's Aid Society of New York City to live with farm families in Missouri.
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 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.
