Thirteen-year-old Meredith yearns to become a teacher but must help support her family, so she travels to the city to work as kitchen help in a doctor's household. Conflicts with the butler, and with Maggie, the doctor's spoiled thirteen-year-old daughter, threaten her job from the start. As Spanish flu sweeps the world and reaches their city, members of the household fall ill one by one. Only Meredith, Maggie and Jack, Maggie's handsome older brother, are left to care for them. Every day the newspaper's list of yesterday's dead adds to Meredith's growing fear. Forced to cope, Meredith finds a strength and maturity beyond her years and shows herself to be a true hero despite her lowly station in the household. As Meredith wrestles with questions of duty and responsibility, she opens the door to a future that she thought had been closed forever.