Seeking to fulfill the promise she made to her dying father, eighteen-year-old Jesselynn Highwood determines to take her little brother and the family's remaining Thoroughbreds from the Twin Oaks plantation in Kentucky to her uncle's farm in Missouri, where they will be safe for the remainder of the Civil War.

Dodging Confederate and Union troops, they ride at night and hide during the day. Finally, after encountering hunger, sickness, and the devastation of war, they arrive in Missouri only to discover that the situation there puts them in even greater danger. But Jesselynn will stop at nothing to save her family, the horses, and whatever remains of Twin Oaks.