Clare Keane is fourteen years old when her mother dies of pneumonia in the tenement room they share in turn-of-the-century Cork, Ireland. Left with two younger brothers, her closest family thousands of miles away in St. Paul, Minnesota, Clare begins a dangerous journey that takes her from Cork through the port of Queenstown to Ellis Island, New York, and finally St. Paul. Rich in historical detail, Clare allows the reader to live the sights, sounds, and smells of a 1906 journey of immigration.