When their mother can no longer support them, six siblings are sent by the Children's Aid Society of New York City to live with farm families in Missouri in 1860.
In 1860, having traveled with his young sister from New York to a foster home on a farm near St. Joseph, Missouri, ten-year-old Danny plots to get his newly-widowed foster father to send for and marry his mother.
Eleven-year-old Michael Patrick Kelly from New York City is sent to a foster home, a Missouri farm with a sadistic owner, a bullying son, and a number of secrets, one of which may be murder.