When Martha Tom crosses the Bok Chitto River into the slave-owning plantation in Mississippi territory she meets Lil Mo, an enslaved boy whose mother is about to be sold, so Martha convinces Lil Mo's family to cross the river and be free.

Presents the journal of a sixteen-year-old girl whose family operates a stop on the Underground Railroad.

When his poor sharecropper father is killed in an accident and leaves the family in debt, twelve-year-old Little Charlie agrees to accompany fearsome plantation overseer Cap'n Buck north in pursuit of people who have stolen from him; Cap'n Buck tells Little Charlie that his father's debt will be cleared when the fugitives are captured, which seems like a good deal until Little Charlie comes face-to-face with the people he is chasing.