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After a massive potato famine strikes Ireland, thirteen-year-old Johanna Leary flees to Canada with her family. But typhus and other illnesses plague the "coffin ships," so named for the staggering number of immigrants who died enroute. One by one Johanna loses the members of her family — first her baby brother on the journey over, then her mother in the Grosse Isle fever sheds where sick passengers are quarantined when they reach the port of Québec, and her father soon after. Johanna has only her brother Michael left when she sets foot on Canadian soil. When her brother is mistakenly told that she too has died, he sets off to find their uncle "somewhere in Canada," leaving Johanna to face a new life in a strange land... totally alone.

Angélique Richard's life is turned upside down when she and her family, along with the people of Grand-Pré, are forced by the British to leave their peaceful home in Acadia. Will she ever see her home again?

When a frightened boy and girl arrive on the Twiss family's doorstep to escape the war in England, Charlotte wonders how she can help her war guests feel safe, even as she starts to feel concerned.

At the turn of the century, Dr. Thomas Barnardo, an English philanthropist, sought to give orphaned and abandoned children a second chance in the New World. These children — "Home Children" as they were called — came to work in Canada as farm labourers and domestic servants. Victoria Cope's family takes in a Home Child, a sad and quiet girl named Mary Anna. Victoria soon discovers the reason for Mary Anna's silence — she was separated from her younger brother. Victoria vows to help Mary Anna find her brother. As Victoria confides her hopes and fears to her "Dear Diary," she reveals herself as a born writer.

Violet Pesheens is struggling to adjust to her new life at Residential School. She has run-ins with the other girls, she misses her Grandma, and everything she brought has been taken from her, including her name — she is now just a number. But worst of all, she has a fear. A fear of forgetting the things she treasures most: her Anishnabe language, the names of those she knew before, and her traditional customs. A fear of forgetting who she is.