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.
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.