Revolutionary War spy, Nathan Hale, tells a hangman and British officer the story of the Donner Party, a doomed wagon train traveling from Illinois to California in 1846.

Young Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan. Because Parvana's father has a foreign education, he is arrested by the Taliban. Women cannot appear in public unless covered head to toe, go to school, or work outside the home, so the family becomes increasingly desperate until Parvana conceives a plan.