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.