Hannie disguises herself as a boy and sneaks into the Gossett mansion to search for her sharecropping contract papers.

Hannie witnesses Juneau Jane steal a ledger from the Gossett family library and hide it in her dress.

The Gossett family lawyer arranges to have Missy and Juneau Jane kidnapped and concealed inside sealed shipping crates.

Hannie stows away on the Genesee Star, but Moses catches her on deck and throws her overboard into the river.

Hannie locates Missy and Juneau Jane alive but traumatized in a barn near the Texas river landing.

The three women take shelter in a small Black church and discover Lost Friends newspaper ads covering the walls.

Hannie resolves to remain in Texas and use the Lost Friends newspaper network to find her long-lost family.

Benny Silva arrives in Augustine, Louisiana, to begin her first year teaching English at the underfunded public school.

Benny meets the formidable Granny T. at the Cluck and Oink diner and hears compelling stories about the town's history.

Nathan Gossett gives Benny a key to the Gossett mansion and full permission to take books from the library.

Granny T. visits Benny's class in period costume, and her storytelling inspires students to propose a Halloween ancestor pageant.

The three women arrive in Fort Worth only to discover the Gossett family lawyer has fled from federal agents.

Missy causes a horse to rear and buck its rider, and the three women are arrested and jailed in Fort Worth.

Benny is summoned to the principal's office and threatened with job termination if she proceeds with the pageant.

Hannie reunites with her long-lost mother at a café in Austin, Texas, after more than a decade apart.

Eighteen-year-old Hannie Gossett, fearing her sharecropping contract will be broken, disguises herself as a boy and follows Miss Lavinia and the illegitimate Juneau Jane toward New Orleans, ending up a stowaway on a riverboat bound for Texas. After rescuing the two women from a kidnapping plot, Hannie discovers Lost Friends newspaper ads in a small Black church and resolves to use that network to find the family stolen from her by slavery. A century later, first-year teacher Benny Silva arrives in impoverished Augustine, Louisiana, where she meets the sharp-memoried Granny T. and is given unexpected access to the Gossett mansion's vast library. Inspired by a classroom visit from Granny T., Benny's students propose a Halloween pageant celebrating the town's buried ancestors, and the project quickly draws dangerous opposition from powerful locals. Back in Texas, Hannie's group is jailed in Fort Worth on false charges before she finally pushes on to Austin and the emotional reunion with her long-lost mother. Together, these events form the spine of a novel about the courage required to reclaim what history has stolen.

The headline events of Hannie's Texas odyssey and Benny's fight for her students.

Benny breaks up with her live-in boyfriend Christopher just before leaving Berkeley to take the teaching job in Augustine.

Benny's disastrous first day ends with students throwing tattered Animal Farm copies and refusing to engage with her lesson.

A student admits to Benny that he has not eaten in more than a day, revealing the depth of poverty in her classroom.

Hannie discovers Missy's necklace lying in the mud after falling through the slats of a sealed shipping crate on the dock.

Congregation members from the small Black church care for the three exhausted women for several days, providing food and shelter.

Juneau Jane begins copying the Lost Friends ads into a handmade ledger, naming the growing collection the Book of Lost Friends.

Benny explores the overgrown Gossett mansion grounds and walks among the tilting, mossy tombstones of the neglected family cemetery.

Benny and LaJuna begin the enormous task of cataloguing the thousands of books crammed into the Gossett mansion library.

Hannie dictates her own Lost Friends ad to Juneau Jane and breaks down in tears describing her missing mother.

Sarge visits Benny at home and warns her against drawing LaJuna into the Gossett family's dangerous and tangled history.

The three women walk out of the Fort Worth jail and immediately run into the scarred, menacing figure of Moses on the street.

Benny and Nathan read the Gossett family Bible and the plantation's slave purchase records together late into the evening.

Benny and her students gather at sunset in the town cemetery for a full dress rehearsal of the ancestor pageant.

Nathan flies back from North Carolina and finds his late sister Robin's handwritten letter hidden inside a childhood copy of Where the Wild Things Are.

The class pageant spreads across social media and the class is invited to perform their production at the state capitol.

Before the main story begins, Benny Silva ends a serious relationship and arrives in Augustine carrying emotional baggage she cannot yet name, while her first classroom disaster reveals just how hungry and hopeless her students already are. On the Louisiana docks, Hannie spots Missy's necklace through a crate's slats and chooses to follow, a small act of solidarity that launches the entire Texas journey. Church congregation members nurse the three women back to health, and Juneau Jane begins transforming stray newspaper clippings into the handwritten Book of Lost Friends ledger. In Augustine, Benny and her student LaJuna undertake the painstaking cataloguing of the Gossett mansion library while Benny navigates warnings from LaJuna's protective aunt, Sarge. After a tense reunion with the mysterious Moses in Fort Worth, Benny back in the present shares the plantation's damning slave records with Nathan, deepening both their understanding of the past and their bond with each other. The pool closes with the pageant's triumphant viral moment and the class's invitation to perform before the entire state.

The supporting moments that deepened Hannie's journey and shaped Benny's teaching.

Hannie overhears Miss Lavinia's confrontation with Juneau Jane, in which Lavinia contemptuously dismisses Juneau Jane's claim to the Gossett inheritance.

Hannie decides to masquerade as the carriage driver and accompany Missy and Juneau Jane on their journey to New Orleans.

Gus McKlatchey helps Hannie hide on the Genesee Star and tells her he has heard moans and thumps coming from the sealed crates.

Benny borrows binoculars from a colleague and peers through the dusty mansion windows, captivated by the shelves crowded with books.

LaJuna stops Benny outside the Cluck and Oink diner and first suggests she investigate the Gossett mansion library for classroom books.

Juneau Jane reads the Lost Friends ads aloud to Hannie, and Hannie's resolve to find her mother becomes unshakeable.

LaJuna retrieves two hidden leather-bound books from the Gossett library, revealing the family Bible and the plantation's slave trade ledgers.

Gus McKlatchey passes Hannie's blue bead necklace through the bars of her Fort Worth jail cell, having kept it since finding it in the river.

Moses reveals himself to be federal deputy marshal Elam Salter, who has been tracking Confederate vigilantes and protecting the women all along.

William Gossett dies an agonizing death at the army outpost while Juneau Jane watches her father for the first and last time.

Nathan tells Benny his sister Robin died from neglecting her heart condition while obsessively researching the Gossett family's dark history.

Vigilantes ambush the group on the Texas frontier, killing Missy and leaving Elam Salter gravely wounded in the leg.

Hannie spots a small child wearing three blue beads on a red ribbon at an Austin café, signaling her family is near.

Nathan and Benny uncover documents hidden in the billiard table's felt lining proving the Gossett family used racist legal tactics to cheat Juneau Jane of her inheritance.

Benny reveals she gave up a newborn daughter for adoption years earlier and expresses quiet hope to find her someday.

The novel's most consequential turning points begin when Hannie decides to act on what she overhears about the Gossett inheritance dispute, choosing to insert herself into a story that is not hers and thereby launching the entire adventure. A chance act of kindness from the boy Gus on the riverboat—and later his return of Hannie's stolen necklace through jail bars—provides the crucial links that keep her search for her family alive. In Augustine, Benny's own turning point comes when LaJuna first points her toward the mansion library and later pulls two hidden leather-bound volumes from the shelves, forcing Benny to reckon with the full weight of the Gossett family's history. The revelation that the threatening Moses is actually a federal lawman protecting the women reframes everything that came before, while the ambush that kills Missy and wounds Salter strips away the last illusions about the dangers of frontier Texas. Nathan's acceptance of his family's corruption and Benny's quiet final confession about the daughter she gave up for adoption bring both storylines to their emotional center, revealing that the search for lost family is the novel's true subject.

The pivotal discoveries and decisions that changed everything for Hannie and Benny.