Recounts the story of Emma Edmonds, the Canadian-born woman who disguised herself as a man and slipped behind Confederate lines to spy for the Union army.

In the bitter winter of 1775-76, Colonel Henry Knox and his younger brother Will, both of the Continental Army, become frustrated with the British blockade of Boston and decide to attempt to move 183 cannons from Fort Ticonderoga, over 300 miles of mountainous wilderness, to defend the besieged city.

Fourteen-year-old Rachel Marsh, an indentured servant in the Boston household of John and Abigail Adams, is caught up in the colonists' unrest that eventually escalates into the massacre of March 5, 1770.

Paul Revere's daughter describes her father's "rides" and the intelligence network of the patriot community prior to the American Revolution.

In South Carolina in 1780, fourteen-year-old Caroline sees the Revolutionary War take a terrible toll among her family and friends and, along with a startling revelation about her own background, comes to understand the true nature of war.

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.

With their father away most of the time advocating independence for the American colonies, the children of Patrick Henry try to raise themselves, manage the family plantation, and care for their mentally ill mother.

Relates the lives of Mary Todd Lincoln, raised in a wealthy Virginia family, and Lizzy Keckley, a dressmaker born a slave, as they grow up separately then become best friends when Mary's childhood dream of living in the White House comes true.