In 1542, nine year old lady Elizabeth lives on an estate near London, striving to get back into the good graces of her father, King Henry VIII, and as the years pass she faces his death and those of other close relatives until she finds herself next in line to ascend the throne of England in 1558.
Brie's plan to leave her strict father and go live with her mother, who abandoned her as a baby, is changed when she discovers a horrible secret about her past.
In 1841, Amanda travels north to New England. On the journey she encounters an explosion on the river boat, someone's stealing her identification for her grandfather, and the exploitation of women in textile mills.
Nicki's teacher-brother assigns her a term paper on the topic of a death in their family, in hopes that she will release long-suppressed emotion about the event.
"It is 1864, the Civil War is moving toward an end. President Lincoln has proclaimed his 'great measure', and Southern slaves are slowly gaining their freedom. But for thirteen-year-old Eulinda, a house slave on a Georgia plantation, it is the most difficult time of her life...".
In the 1880s, young Fanny McCoy witnesses the growth of a terrible and violent feud between her Kentucky family and the West Virginia Hatfields, complicated by her older sister Roseanna's romance with a Hatfield.
Harriet Hemings, rumored to be the daughter of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, one of his black slaves, struggles with the problems facing her--to escape from the velvet cage that is Monticello, or to stay, and thus remain a slave.
