In 1878, twelve-year-old Ida Kate and her widowed father welcome a mail-order bride and her baby to their Kansas homestead, but Ida Kate soon suspects that the bride is not the woman with whom Papa has corresponded.
In the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, twelve-year-old Clara finds a baby left on the doorstep of her family's boarding house, and sets out to unravel the surrounding mysteries.