Etta and her brother and sister, wards of the state of Massachusetts in 1840, have been parceled off to separate foster homes.Determined to gather her family back together and create a secure home for herself and her siblings, Etta has run away from the last in a long string of foster homes, resolved to find a place where they can live as a family.In her search, she encounters Walter, a young runaway who is hiding out from his alcoholic father in a cabin on the New Haven and Northampton Canal.
Before she can get her own family together, Etta gets caught up in Walter's problems, which include the transportation of a body up a mountain in the dead of night, convincing the canal company to hire them as a security team, and catching the vandals who are determined to sabotage the canal.
