Recounts the voyage in 1811 of the "New Orleans", the first steamboat to travel down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, a trip fraught with dangers including North America's most violent earthquake.
A 19th-century boy, floating down the Mississippi River on a raft with a runaway slave, becomes involved with a feuding family, two scoundrels pretending to be royalty, and Tom Sawyer's aunt, who mistakes him for Tom.
In 1896, fourteen-year-old Megan joins her sister and family on their steamboat for the summer riding up the Mississippi River towards St. Paul, Minnesota, and through all of their adventures, Megan realizes what is her "true calling.".
Bill and his brother Curt survive a risky trip down the Mississippi as members of a flatboat crew, only to have to make the much more dangerous trip back along the bandit-ridden Trace trail.