When twelve-year-old Charity Bullock's parents die in Galveston's yellow
fever epidemic in 1853, she and her fifteen year-old sister, Hope, must
travel across the Texas frontier by ox wagon to live with their
great-uncle, Richard Bullock, whom they have never met. Their only
living relative, Great-Uncle Bullock owns a large hotel in Austin, the
new capitol of the Republic of Texas, where his incessant swigging from
a jug of corn liquor threatens his business and the Bullock sisters'
tenuous security.