The lives of twelve-year-old Lou and her younger brother, Oz, change forever in 1940 when an accident involving their parents results in their being uprooted from their New York City home and moved to live with their great-grandmother in the mountains of Virginia.
While Abby faces motherhood and the destruction of her husband's law practice due to the economic upheavals of the Depression, her brother Daniel must learn to deal with his mistakes and with the deaths of those close to him.