When the Depression hits in Cairo, Illinois, and Oscar Ogilvie's father must sell their home and vast model train set-up to look for work in California, eleven-year-old Oscar is left with his dour aunt, where he befriends a mysterious drifter, witnesses a stunning bank robbery, and is suddenly catapulted onto a train that takes him to a different time and place.

Seventeen-year-old twins--and powerful mediums--Edie and Violet Bond are part of a Spiritualist show, a tight-knit group of young women who express unladylike talents and opinions under the guise of communing with spirits, but when the dark spirit responsible for their mother's death crosses into the land of the living, the twins race against time to uncover a killer who will stop at nothing to cheat death.