In 1841 thirteen-year-old Libby and her family begin a new life on the shores of Lake Michigan where her father works as a surveyor for the Ottawa Indians and Libby is reunited with her Indian friend Fawn.

After their mother dies of typhoid, Verna and her younger sister Carlie move with their father, a psychiatrist, and stern Aunt Maude to an asylum for the mentally ill in early-twentieth-century Michigan, where new ideas in the treatment of mental illness are being proposed, but old prejudices still hold sway.

In 1818 Mary O'Shea must decide whether to remain on Michilmackinac Island and marry her dear Indian friend White Hawk or to accept the proposal of James, an English nobleman, and to go with him to London.