The year is 1758. Lively Jamesina Mackenzie's three older brothers, who are with the British army in America, and her father and youngest brother, living in exile in France, have left her in the care of her grandfather and aunts and uncles in their clan's homeland on the west coast of the highlands of Scotland. Yet danger reaches her even there, surrounded by Mackenzies. She is snatched from the shore by "spiriters," men who kidnap children and young people to sell to planters and farmers in America as bond slaves. She wakes to find herself a prisoner aboard the Sparrowhawk, bound for Virginia. The hardships and adventures that follow take her from Shaws Plantation to the mountains of Cherokee country, on the strangest of all roads home.