Lyddie, a young girl, has to cope with the fact that her mother is going crazy and that her two little sisters are going (with their mother) to live at an aunt and uncle's house. She and her younger brother Charles do well alone, though, but their farm is in debt and the family has no money to pay for it. So both she and Charles are rented out to different families and places to try to make ends meet. Lyddie is barely earning anything, though, and she desperately wants her family to be reunited in their beloved farm. So she becomes a mill girl and has to live with the hardships of sickness, speeding machines, deaths, and her own worries.