WAGONS WEST! As the Civil War rages, the Hitchcocks head west to Pike's Peak. They've left their Pennsylvania home far behind as they ascend the Rocky Mountains, certain they'll find gold! Thirteen-year-old Eda keeps a secret journal as they travel through hostile Ute country and finally find shelter in a broken-down cabin. With scant food and only howling wolves for company, everything seems strange and frightening until Eda's seventeen-year-old sister Belle gets a job teaching, and Eda and her oldest sister Lucy meet an unusual but friendly family of actors. Eda and her sisters are beginning to settle in when Pa decides the family should return home. But as they travel down out of the high country, they meet with near-tragedy and are forced to stay in rough-and-tumble Denver. Here, penniless and freezing, they're herded into a tent city with nothing left of their former lives but a few clothes and tattered memories. That's when she meets an "enemy" who teaches her the most important lesson she'll ever learn....