In 1919, the Turn­ers are bare­ly scrap­ing by. When their father los­es his job and their ten­u­ous place bare­ly above the pover­ty line is threat­ened, their moth­er decides to enter her fam­i­ly into the world of vaude­ville. The four Turn­er sis­ters agree on very few things, but on one point they’re in accord: none of them has any inter­est in per­form­ing. Nell is hap­pi­ly mar­ried with a baby of her own; 13-year-old Kit’s great­est wish is to stop grow­ing taller; Win­nie’s love of learn­ing has her yearn­ing for col­lege; and Gert knows that she wants to live a bet­ter life than her mother’s.

Trav­el­ing by train from town to town, the Turn­er women find a new kind of free­dom in the com­pa­ny of per­form­ers who are diverse as their acts. Along the way, the Turn­ers face dan­gers and turns of fate for which they could nev­er have pre­pared in a sto­ry of awak­en­ing to unex­pect­ed pos­si­bil­i­ties, to love and heart­break, and to the dawn of a New Amer­i­can era.