Bethia Mayfield befriends Caleb, the son of a Wampanoag chieftain, as she grows up near Martha's Vineyard in the mid-seventeenth century, and watches as her minister father attempts to convert the Native Americans, but the fates of the children are tied together as Bethia's father encourages the education of Caleb, a privilege Bethia has always wished for, and the two are reunited in Cambridge.
