Bonita," her mother's name-is an energetic, intelligent, precocious twelve-year-old. She yearns for adulthood, chafes at the notion that she's a little girl, not ready for the challenges that beset her in the turmoil of this new city on the brink of cataclysmic upheaval. Readers follow Nita through encounters with the Underground Railroad (Yes, it did operate on the West Coast.), the forced removal and attempted genocide of the Miwok people, who are her dear friends. All this while she navigates the challenges of her own adolescence and the violence of a California that is still something of a raw frontier. A frontier that is yearning for maturity as much as Nita herself.