In rural Indiana in 1904, fifteen-year-old Russell's dreams of quitting school and joining a wheat threshing crew are disrupted when his older sister takes over the teaching at his one-room schoolhouse after mean, old Myrt Arbuckle "hauls off and dies."

A fictionalized account of Frances Slocum, a Quaker girl from Pennsylvania, kidnaped at the age of five by Indians and later forced to choose between the two cultures. Through her eyes is seen the destruction of the Indians.

When a diphtheria epidemic hits her 1840 village, thirteen-year-old Jessie discovers it is actually a 1996 tourist site under unseen observation by heartless scientists, and it's up to Jessie to escape the village and save the lives of the dying children.

Ten-year-old Ben and eight-year-old Polly are used to their parents' struggle to make ends meet on their Indiana farm in the 1890s and look forward to a better life in North Dakota where they will be homesteaders, but the windswept prairie will provide new challenges.