Traces the story of a boy who moves across the country to rural northern California, where his efforts to adjust are challenged by a fast-moving firestorm that places family homes and lives at risk.

"As a twelve-year-old boy growing up in South Vietnam, Thọ has heard of other boys disappearing from time to time, smuggled out of the country so they wouldn't have to be conscripted into the Communist army. But Thọ is too young to worry about any of that. He spends his afternoons cricket fighting and playing soccer with his friends. Until one day, he finds out that his parents have arranged for him to leave the country -- alone. What follows...

When the Berlin Wall went up, Gerta, her mother, and her brother Fritz are trapped on the eastern side where they were living, while her father, and her other brother Dominic are in the West--four years later, now twelve, Gerta sees her father on a viewing platform on the western side and realizes he wants her to risk her life trying to tunnel to freedom.

A nine-year-old Jewish girl, helped by Irena Sendler and the Zegota organization, is smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto, given a new identity, and sent to live in the countryside for the duration of the World War II.

During the Civil War, African American Mary Bowser becomes a maid in the Richmond mansion of Confederate States of America president Jefferson Davis as part of a plan to pass along secrets to help the Union. Includes a replica of a Confederate decoder, plus other spycraft materials, in a sealed envelope to help the reader discover clues found in the text and illustrations.