Born and raised in a prison where is mother is incarcerated, Perry T. Cook is taken to live with a foster family, where he feels trapped and out of place, and works to find a way to be reunited with his mother.

From her home in Lidice, Czechoslovakia, in 1942, eleven-year-old Milada is taken with other blond, blue-eyed children to a school in Poland to be trained as "proper Germans" for adoption by German families, but all the while she remembers her true name and history.

In 1501 fifteen-year-old Catharine of Aragon arrives in England to marry Arthur, the eldest son of King Henry VII, but soon finds her expectations of a happy settled life radically changed when Arthur unexpectedly dies and her future becomes the subject of a bitter dispute between the kingdoms of England and Spain.