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Julia May and her family have done the unthinkable. They have fled from their life of slavery on a tobacco plantation in Virginia and are making their way north, on foot, where they have heard that slaves can be free. The journey takes them through swamps, travelling by night and hiding by day. The diary that Julia May keeps is another act of bravery. Learning to read and write alongside her mistress at the plantation was her own secret and forbidden as a slave. Julia May's diary records her fears and the extraordinary things she sees during her voyage and keeps her going through the hard times until they are finally free.

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.

Young Hélène St. Onge and her older sister Catherine are orphans. When King Louis XVI orders all men in New France to marry, Catherine becomes a fille du roi, one of the many young women sent to the new world as brides. Hélène will accompany her on the long sea voyage and live with her sister's new family. But Catherine dies during the gruelling journey, and Hélène finds herself alone in strange new country. New France is a far harsher place than she imagined, with bitter winters and the threat of attack from the Iroquois. Will the new friendships she has made on her long voyage enable her to survive?

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?

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.