In 1874 eleven-year-old Sam and his family move from Kentucky to the southern Dakota Territory, where harsh conditions and a plague of hungry grasshoppers threaten their chances for survival.
Katie, whose family is not sympathetic to the rebel soldiers during the American Revolution, hides under the clothes in her mother's wedding trunk when they invade her home.
Eleven-year-old Scar Boy, one of a group of primitive cave dwellers, discovers that he has a gift for making pictures and becomes an apprentice to Painter of Caves.