In 1704, in Massachusetts, eleven-year-old Mercy and her family are captured by Mohawk Indians and their French allies, and forced to march through bitter cold to French Canada, there to adapt to new lives.
During the Depression in 1939, ten-year-old Ellen misses her life before her father lost his job and her family had to move in with her grandfather in Vancouver, but when she meets a friendly homeless man who lives in the dangerous Hobo Jungle near the railroad tracks, her perspective on her own life changes.