After their escape from North Carolina to Philadelphia in the summer of 1864, Addy and her mother begin their new life as free people as her mother gets a paying job and Addy goes to school and learns a lesson in true friendship.

Addy and her mother forgo their Christmas plans to help the newly freed slaves arriving in Philadelphia during the Civil War.

Skinny Nora Jean Sampson and her friends at R.B. Nolen Elementary School are kept busy with a snake in the girls' bathroom, a scary Halloween fun house, and a pizza party in the library.