La scrittura di Linda Spalding approfondisce le complessità delle culture globali, esplorando spesso l'attrito tra la vita contemporanea e le credenze tradizionali profondamente radicate. La sua opera è caratterizzata da una profonda esplorazione della psiche umana e dalle tensioni intrinseche che sorgono quando mondi disparati si scontrano. Spalding crea magistralmente personaggi che navigano intricate questioni di identità e appartenenza in un mondo in cui le usanze antiche si intersecano con influenze moderne. La sua prosa è avvincente, lirica e sempre risonante.
In 1798, Daniel Dickinson, a young Quaker father and widower, leaves his home in Pennsylvania to establish a new life. He sets out with two horses, a wagon full of belongings, his five children, a 15-year-old orphan wife, and a few land warrants for his future homestead.
Spring 1855 and Virginian farmer John Dickinson has a dangerous secret that will lead to a tragic decision. The family's riches have been wasted by his reckless brother who holds all of them hostage and, adding fuel to John's desperation, the enslaved workers have been visited by a Canadian abolitionist who pushes them to escape. One does, and his pursuit of freedom involves a dangerous quest to find his mother and child North of the border. Meanwhile, the Dickinson family become fugitives of another kind, escaping their losses in a wagon en route to a new life in the West. Confronted by hunger, fear and a near fatal river boat accident, each member of the family is tested to their limits