One word describes 13-year-old India Moody—perseverance. She has heard of a college in Ohio that accepts women and is determined to go there, an unthinkable dream for a girl in 1862. She is tutored by her neighbor, Emory Trimble, an eccentric scientist who teaches her about biology and chemistry, and with whom she later forms a romantic relationship. When her father, an ambulance wagon driver for the Confederate Army, is missing in action, she sets off to find him, ending up in the middle of the Battle of Antietam, one of the bloodiest of the war. She faces danger as the Union Army advances toward her home in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley and sees soldiers leave her town and not return. She witnesses Micah and Ester, slaves and friends of the Trimbles, harbor an injured Yankee soldier, putting their own lives in danger.

Wells has created a sense of what the North and the South endured during the Civil War by interweaving stories from both sides, and gives a horrifying picture of medical practices and superstitions of the times. This powerful novel is unflinching in its depiction of war and the devastation it causes, yet shows the resilience and hope that can follow such a tragedy. India is a memorable, thoroughly believable character who faces many losses, yet readers are confident that she will follow her dream and attend Oberlin College.