Tired of doing chores and longing for adventure during the Great Depression, Kit meets a hobo and decides to hop on a freight train.

In 1932, Kit faces a very different Christmas because of her family's financial problems and allows her pride to estrange her from her best friend.

A young man has a lifelong love of rock collecting that eventually leads him to work at a science museum.

In 1929 Kit finds that she has hard lessons to learn about the Depression, both at home where she is helping her mother run a boarding house while her father looks for a new job, and at school, where a fight spoils the preparations for the Thanksgiving pageant.

In 1935, when her mother gets a job housekeeping for a woman who does not like children, eleven-year-old Turtle is sent to stay with relatives she has never met in far away Key West, Florida.

2 CHILDREN FOR SALE. The sign is a last resort. It sits on a farmhouse porch in 1931, but could be found anywhere in an era of breadlines, bank runs and broken dreams. It could have been written by any mother facing impossible choices. For struggling reporter Ellis Reed, the gut-wrenching scene evokes memories of his family's dark past. He snaps a photograph of the children, not meant for publication. But when it leads to his big break, the consequences...