Twelve-year-old Jesse leaves his home on Maryland's Eastern Shore to help a young runaway slave find a safe haven in the early days of the Civil War.

In 1854 in Eastern Maryland twelve-year-old Ann is a slave, grateful that her family is still all together; but when their master, in need of money, decides to sell Ann and her younger brother, their parents decide to take the dangerous step of running away north to freedom--a journey filled with danger, especially since they are not sure how to find the first station on the Underground Railroad.

While living in Texas in 1858, fourteen-year-old Caleb faces a dilemma in deciding whether or not to assist fugitive slaves in their run for freedom.

A nine-year-old slave keeps a diary of his journey to freedom along the Underground Railroad in 1857.

Because of the strong influence which her grandfather, an abolitionist, has in her life, fourteen-year-old Lucy assists a fugitive slave girl in her escape.

In the years before the Civil War, Bright discovers that her parents are providing a safehouse for the Underground Railroad and helps to save a runaway slave named Marcus.

Twelve-year-old Elias is sent to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky to fight a case of consumption--and ends up fighting for the lives of a secret community of escaped slaves traveling along the Underground Railroad.

A twelve-year-old slave girl begins writing in a journal where she documents her journey via the Underground Railroad from Alexandria, Virginia, to freedom in St. Catharines, Canada.

In 1857, while working for the Underground Railroad on a Mississippi River steamboat, thirteen-year-old Libby hunts for the swindler who has robbed her father, and she tries to reunite the fugitive slave Jordan with his missing father.

With the end of the Civil War in 1865, Addy desperately hopes that her family will be reunited in freedom in Philadelphia, but the future may hold both happiness and heartache.