Concord, Massachusetts, 1845. Fifteen-year-old Rachel is neglecting her farm chores in order to sketch and draw. To make money for her art supplies, she will raise hens for their eggs. But, a drought forces her father to ask for that money for the farm. Understanding his need, but miserable when he calls her life's ambition to draw a little hobby, Rachel runs to Walden Pond to recover. There, she is befriended by Henry David Thoreau, who is living an experiment in Walden Woods. During a subsequent visit to Thoreau, she meets Margaret Fuller, author, editor of The Dial, the Transcendentalist journal, reporter and America's first female foreign correspondent. Fuller takes samples of Rachel's art with her to New York for an opinion about a teacher. Gino Riccardi agrees to instruct Rachel by mail, until she can come to New York. Rachel's family visits her brother in Boston, and, not allowed into the factory, Rachel contents herself with sketching a young boy warming himself by the fire in the courtyard. She is shocked by the number of children working here. Rachel's talent reaches new highs with the sketch of the young Simon, and Sr. Riccardi notifies her that she must now come to New York for instruction. Rachel wants Thoreau to intercede with Riccardi to keep her lessons coming by mail, but Thoreau instead tells her about his friends, the Emersons, in New York, who have room for her (William is Ralph Waldo's brother). Their conversation is interrupted by shouts of Ben falling into frozen Walden Pond while ice fishing. Thoreau rushes out to save him. With the family now in debt to Thoreau for their son's life, he accepts their thanks in terms of Rachel's being allowed to study art inNew York, and the portrait of Simon for his walls. In the Spring, Rachel says good-bye to Thoreau and her beloved woods; he too prepares to leave Walden. Throughout the novel, the author is careful to contrast for the reader the difference between commonly accepted attitudes and expectations and those of the Transcendentalists who judge people in defiance of conventional expectations.