Eleven-year-old Hillary Cook and her widowed mother, Laura, must both work to survive. Hillary works twelve hours a day, six days a week at the Alton Textile Mill. On Sunday afternoons, she and her two friends pick flowers, dream and play pretend in the nearby countryside. The girls pledge to be friends for eternity and call themselves "wildflowers."

In this difficult world, innocent children are forced to operate dangerous machinery at the mill and even darker abuses are committed against them. Mill owner Frank Dragus has young girls sent to his office for whatever he pleases-and he is interested in Hillary. When tragedy befalls Hillary and her mother, Hillary is forced into a situation that may have disastrous consequences .