Reeder, Carolyn

During the Depression, eleven-year-old Carrie makes her annual summer visit to her relatives in the Blue Ridge Mountains and watches her determined grandfather fight against the government's attempt to take his farm land for a new national park.

Determined to take her father's coal-carrying barge on the C & O Canal from Cumberland, Maryland, to Georgetown in D.C., twelve-year-old Kate learns hurtful truths about herself.

Edward, the son of a white plantation owner, and his black house servant and friend Simon witness the siege of Petersburg during the Civil War.

At the end of the Civil War, twelve-year-old Will, having lost all his immediate family, reluctantly leaves his city home to live in the Virginia countryside with his aunt and the uncle he considers a traitor because he refused to take part in the war.