Young Gwen Thomas has her heart set on learning to play her grandfather's big harp in her living room. When she and her family leave the Rhondda Valley in Wales and sail for America in 1903, she convinces her mother to bring the harp along, but when they arrive in the coal mining area of Eastern Kentucky, she must learn many other things first-like how to deal with a hostile school environment, how to help her mother birth a baby, and how to survive a flood. Can she keep her dream of being a harpist alive? Or should she set more practical goals?