Odie and Albert are enrolled as the only White students at the Lincoln Indian Training School after their father dies.

Mrs. Frost, the kind schoolteacher at Lincoln School, offers to adopt Odie, Albert, and Mose.

A tornado strikes the Frost farm and kills Mrs. Frost, taking away the boys' chance at a new home.

DiMarco leads Odie to a quarry at night, intending to kill him the way he killed young Billy.

Odie pulls DiMarco off a quarry ledge in self-defense, causing him to fall to his death.

Albert threatens to expose Mr. Brickman's affair; Mose knocks Brickman unconscious, and they take the contents of his safe.

Odie, Albert, Mose, and Emmy flee Lincoln School and set off down the Gilead River in a canoe.

A one-eyed farmer named Jack discovers the children in his shed and holds them at gunpoint.

Odie shoots Jack with a stolen gun when he fears Jack is about to harm Albert.

Odie confronts Sister Eve about fraud, accidentally freeing the rattlesnake Lucifer from its cage, which bites Albert.

Albert survives the rattlesnake bite when antivenom arrives just in time, after the doctor offers to amputate his leg.

Sid submits Albert's photo to a newspaper without permission, alerting the Brickmans, who arrive and force the group to flee.

Albert, Mose, and Emmy choose to stay in St. Paul, so Odie secretly boards a southbound train alone.

Julia reveals to Odie that she is his biological mother, having given birth to him in that very house.

Julia and Mrs. Brickman struggle and fall from a window; Mrs. Brickman dies and Julia falls into a coma.

Four children escape an abusive boarding school after a violent confrontation with a predatory staff member and flee down the Gilead River in a stolen canoe. A dangerous encounter with a lonely, volatile farmer named Jack tests the group and forces Odie into a desperate act of violence. Joining a traveling revival crusade, they experience a near-tragedy when Albert is bitten by a rattlesnake and barely survives before the Brickmans track them down and they must flee again. The group finds temporary refuge in St. Paul, but Odie's restless search for home drives him to break away and travel to St. Louis alone. There he discovers that the woman he believed was his aunt is actually his biological mother, and a final confrontation with the school's superintendent ends in death and crisis. Despite near-disaster, Julia survives and Odie's scattered companions reunite at her bedside, pointing toward a hopeful future.

The full journey from Lincoln School to St. Louis and Julia's revelation.

Mrs. Brickman threatens to send Odie to a reformatory school and confiscate his harmonica if his behavior does not improve.

Mrs. Frost arranges for Odie, Albert, and Mose to be reassigned from other duties to work on her farm.

Odie confronts DiMarco in the dormitory when DiMarco invents a pretext to take young student Billy Red Sleeve away at night.

Billy Red Sleeve vanishes from the school the day after Odie publicly stands up for him against DiMarco.

Emmy wakes Odie during the night and instructs him to hide ten dollars in his shoe for later.

Jack invites the children into his home for a hoedown but turns violent when Emmy accidentally knocks over his liquor.

Sister Eve clasps Emmy's hand, immediately understands her gift, and invites Odie and Emmy to join the traveling crusade.

Odie follows Sid and watches him secretly pay several people who had appeared to be miraculously healed at Sister Eve's shows.

The group discovers a skeleton on a river island, and Mose insists on burying it with a proper eulogy from Odie.

Odie wanders into a shantytown, meets the stranded Schofield family, and falls in love with their daughter Maybeth.

Albert repairs the Schofields' broken truck at Odie's urging and Emmy's quiet insistence that it is the right thing to do.

Mose leads his companions to a monument marking the government's mass execution of thirty-eight Sioux men.

Odie is stunned to encounter Jack, previously believed dead, alive and reformed at the St. Paul courthouse.

Odie escapes two threatening men at a rail yard by throwing his money into a fire and fleeing in the confusion.

Albert, Mose, Emmy, and Sister Eve arrive at the St. Louis hospital to reunite with Odie at Julia's bedside.

Before the escape begins, life at Lincoln School is defined by daily cruelties, small kindnesses, and the troubling disappearance of a vulnerable student. Once on the river, overlooked moments — hidden money, a borrowed sock puppet, a midnight hoedown — prove as consequential as the larger dramatic events. Encounters with Sister Eve's crusade and a stranded Kansas family reveal the depth of Odie's compassion and test the loyalty binding the four companions together. In St. Paul, a quiet miracle surfaces when Odie discovers that Jack, whom he believed he had killed, is alive and changed for the better. The journey ends not with a final battle but with a reunion, as the whole scattered family gathers at Odie's mother's hospital bedside to affirm bonds that distance could not break.

The supporting moments that shaped every step of the children's escape.

Odie finds a doll belonging to the missing Billy at the quarry and realizes DiMarco has brought him there to kill him.

Before fleeing Lincoln School, Odie paints the words 'God is a tornado' on the town's water tower.

During a nighttime storm, Emmy has a vision and whispers to Odie 'He's not dead,' hinting at her clairvoyant gift.

Searching Jack's house, Odie finds a photo revealing that the soldier who took Jack's wife was Jack's own wartime friend Rudy.

Odie secretly watches Jack weep desperately and alone at a family burial site beneath a solitary oak tree.

Jack tells Odie that God is found within the surrounding beautiful, tender land itself.

Odie realizes he threw Albert's antivenom into the river, having mistaken the life-saving vials for drugs.

Sister Eve reveals that her gift for understanding others came from surviving her father's abuse before he died by suicide.

Sister Eve tells Odie that Albert wants to protect him, Mose wants to find himself, and Odie wants to find home.

Forrest takes Mose away from the group to guide him in learning about injustices perpetrated against his Sioux ancestors.

Odie gives the Schofield family most of the money Sister Eve donated to the group, trusting Powell to use it wisely.

Albert offers a heartfelt apology to Mose for the cultural violence White society inflicted on his people.

Odie learns that his new friend Shlomo hides his Jewish identity under the name John Kelly to avoid discrimination.

Mrs. Brickman confesses that she murdered Ezekiel O'Banion after recognizing him as a liquor deliveryman who knew her shameful past.

Sister Eve tells Odie that storytelling is his gift and encourages him to imagine his mother waking from her coma.

From the moment Odie recognizes DiMarco's murderous intent at the quarry to the final scene in a hospital room, this pool traces the inner turning points that mark Odie's coming of age. Small revelations — a weeping man beneath an oak tree, a wartime photograph hidden in a farmhouse attic, a friend's secret name — force Odie to revise his judgments about people and about God. Spiritual encounters with Sister Eve unlock truths about each companion's deepest desires and about the relationship between suffering, faith, and healing. Mose's guided discovery of Sioux history and Albert's heartfelt apology mark the group's collective moral awakening to injustices larger than their own troubles. By the time Mrs. Brickman delivers her devastating final confession and Odie sits alone in a hospital room, he has learned that storytelling itself is a means of shaping the world toward the ending the heart imagines.