Shy, sensible Betsy, 15, takes charge of the family farm and her brother Johnnie, 10, when their mother rides south to bring her sick husband home to New Madrid, Missouri Territory. Four days later, December 16, 1811, powerful earthquakes destroy homes and trees, flood and poison the land, and turn the Mississippi into a river of death. Their neighbors flee the never-ending quakes. Betsy stays to wait for her parents, care for the animals, and find the family’s stolen money. She and Johnnie share a lean-to with four strangers—a 16-year-old French-Shawnee boy, a mute slave woman, a poor French tutor, and his elegant Spanish wife. Their secrets hold them there as the quakes and the cold threaten their lives.
