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 1851, thirteen-year-old Cecilia has her eyes opened to the horrors of slavery when she accompanies her ornithologist uncle on an expedition in search of the rare "Scarlet Ibis," and watches as he shows slaves the way to the Underground Railroad.

In 1864 the Civil War is moving toward an end but for thirteen-year-old Eulinda, a house slave on a Georgia plantation, it is the the most difficult time of her life. She is mistreated by her msters, her younger brother Zeke has been sold off and her older brother Neddy has run away to join the Northern war effort. When Eulinda is offered a chance to escape North, she must make an agonizing decision.

After serving Martha Washington for twenty years, Oney realizes that she will never be a part of General Washington's family at Mount Vernon. She must make a choice: does she stay where she is, comfortable with the family that she has known since she was born, or does she take liberty into her own hands and, like her father, become one of the Gone?