A historical novel based on an actual narrative. In 1754, on the brink of the French and Indian war, young Miriam Willard and her older sister's family are captured in an Indian raid on Charleston, N.H., where they are held for ransom.

Mina is excited to start her mentorship at A Batch Made in Heaven, a bakery famous throughout Washington State for their unique cookies, because she would like to become a baker herself, and she wants to enter the cookie competition in Seattle to win money to help her father open a restaurant to replace the one he left behind in Delhi; but she is soon frustrated because the owner's annoying son, Flynn, will not even let her near the kitchen--clearly...

In September 1944, eleven-year-old Billie lives with her great aunt, Doff, eagerly waiting for her older brother Leo to return from boot camp, and desperate to find the father that left when she was little; but Leo brings a friend with him, a Navajo named Denny, and the injured dog they have rescued and named Bear--and when the two young men go off to war, Bear becomes the thread that ties them all together, and helps Billie to find a true friend....