When Marie-Grace discovers a baby outside her father's office and a slave catcher claims the boy, she helps place him at a white orphanage where she becomes a volunteer, as her friendship with Cecile grows and she hears rumors of yellow fever.

"When two Depression-era migrant workers, Paul and Vern, find an abandoned baby in the woods, they take it upon themselves to care for the mysterious child. When fifteen-year-old Marigold, reviled by her family after an unwanted pregnancy, loses her baby in the forest, her whole world is painted black. She's still fraught with despair when she discovers what seems to be a miraculous power within her. Coot, a child preacher on the Kansas plains, escapes...