The way twelve-year-old Ked Eakins of Norton, Maine, sees it his life has been stolen from him, piece by piece; first by kyphosis, a spinal abnormality which has made him a social outcast at school and a target for the school bully, by his friends who have recently abandoned him, by his mother who left for the West Coast taking the insurance which might have saved him with her, and by his father who is a gambling addict who has lost the rent money--but...

Seventeen-year-old Astrid Sullivan belongs to a family of compulsive gamblers, and now that her father has been laid off from his job in Detroit and lost all their money betting on the Titans, which are half-horse, half car, and race around impossible tracks, her family is falling apart. But when Astrid's new friends give her the chance to participate in this year's Titan races, she thinks she sees a way to win some money and keep her family together....

In 1849, Zeb's parents ship him off to St. Louis to become an apprentice tanner, but the naive twelve-year-old rebels, casts his lot with a cheating riverboat gambler, while a slave and an Indian medicine man try to get Zeb back on the right path.