An American Children's Crusade

In 1706, Mary and her little band of children settle in Boston's Almshouse with the hulking, pest-disfigured Elihu secretly in love with her. As the novel progresses, each has a story to tell: James/Jamess, the berdache, falls in love with the castrato, Marco; Lydia, the Quaker Prophetess, discovers that she is the lost Abenaki Indian, Shell Bead; former slave 'Chuba leaves with Lydia to seek out her family in Virginia; Abigail, the teen portrait limner, paints the beautiful Thomas for whose love she will pay dearly; Baby Friedrich, with water on the brain, teaches all by their need to care for him; and others such as Dorcas, the witch's daughter, Emily of the blank mind, Little Miss Soot who claims to be a Persian princess, and Son, the ghost of Mary's murdered boy, accompany them. As Mary guides them, she discovers her wisdom growing into universal truths with more and more revealed to her.