The Civil War has broken out in Missouri and Lettie Worthington won't take sides—though she has a brother fighting in each army and a fiancé with a guerrilla band sympathetic to the South. Not involved in the conflict, Lettie deals with her own struggles and hardships at home, and with the help of former slaves, she saves her family's hemp and tobacco farm. Upon learning that both brothers were in the Battle of Lexington, twenty miles west, she leaves the farm and paddles a skiff up the Missouri River to find them.