On a cold December night, Louis must decide whether to brave the treacherous Detroit River to take a slave family to freedom.

After eluding capture by the Nazis, seven-year-old Rebekkah and her mother are brought from Italy to the United States to begin a new life.

Young Moses and his family are barely scraping by. He helps his father in their fish stall selling each day's catch to passersby but times are hard in 1889 Baltimore. It's difficult to provide for a family of ten. But when they hear of free farmland out in Oklahoma, it sounds like the answer to their prayers. The family sells all they own and heads west to fulfill a lifelong dream. Their wagon journey, however, is plagued with troubles from ice storms...

In 1933, facing the hardships of the Great Depression, Ruth learns to follow her mother's example and count her lucky stars when she turns her disappointment over not being able to attend fourth grade into a blessing for her younger sister.

After a day of picking cotton in late 1860, Ella May, a young slave, joins her friends Bobby and Sue at their second job of listening outside the windows of their master's house for useful information.

Lily gets permission to plant a Victory Garden at the house next door, where the Bishops' son has died in the war, and slowly the garden helps Mrs. Bishop recover from her grief.

On August 10, 1813, with the British navy advancing up the Chesapeake Bay to destroy the shipyards in St. Michaels, Maryland, young Henry Middle thinks of a way to save his home town from British cannons.

In Depression-era Detroit, Gordy and Ira, one African-American and one German-Jewish, bond over a shared interest in boxing as America awaits the rematch between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling.

"In Depression-era northern Michigan, a young boy meets a teenager serving in the Civilian Conservation Corps, the work relief program established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to employ millions of young men during the Great Depression"--