In the summer of 1945 in Chicago, twelve-year-old Christine anxiously awaits, along with her mother and sister, news of the political activist father they had to leave behind when they emigrated from Poland six years before.
Captured by a roving band of Sioux Indians and brought up as the chief's daughter, Rachel is recaptured by her white family and finds it difficult to adjust, as she longs to return to the tribe.
During a summer on a Maine island, seventeen-year-old Molly and her older cousin become very close, as she helps him deal with his father's suicide and his experiences in the Vietnam War, and as together they share encounters with a troubled ghost.
