In Denmark in 1946, thirteen-year-old Peter, his twin sister Elise, and their friend Henrik find themselves involved in a sinister plot to keep a group of Jews from reaching what they hope will become their new homeland in Eretz Israel.

While visiting their cousins' farm on the west coast of Denmark in the summer of 1944, eleven-year-old twins Peter and Elise learn the power of prayer as they work to rescue a downed British pilot.

In 1945 in Denmark, thirteen-year-old brother and sister Peter and Elise try to help their Jewish friend Henrik when his mother and a friend of hers are arrested by the Russians and accused of being spies.

In late nineteenth-century Australia, Patrick McWaid and Michael take an accidental ride on a hot air balloon.

When, in 1943, Germany plans to send all Danish Jews to prison camps, Peter and Elise, eleven-year-old twins, face danger trying to help their Jewish friend Henrik escape to Sweden.

In 1945, while taking a train to Copenhagen to meet the King, Peter and Elise meet a man with a strange clocklike device and later have other strange adventures and encounters.

When thirteen-year-old Patrick and his family befriend a young Chinese immigrant who arrives in Australia in 1855, they face the prejudices of local miners.

In Australia, having settled with their family in a kind but mysterious riverboat captain's shantyhouse, twelve-year-old Patrick and his older sister Becky are captured by bushrangers.

In 1868, after their father is wrongfully convicted and deported on the last prison ship to Australia, twelve-year-old Patrick and the rest of the McWaid family determine to stay together and follow him to the far-off continent.