Over the River sweeps the viewer back into the social upheaval of 19th-century America and the tumultuous life of Lydia Maria Child, a popular writer of children's literature and domestic advice whose books were burned when she entered the battle to abolish slavery and published An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans. Despite increasing hardships in her personal life, she would become one of the country's most eloquent voices for human dignity, fighting to "keep the fire of freedom from being extinguished on our national altar."