In 1879 three siblings -- Virgil, Marcus, and Liberty Lander -- are homesteading 160 acres in Nicodemus, an all Black community in northwestern Kansas. Not prairie fires, cyclones, droughts, winter blizzards, loneliness, snakes, bugs, or harassment of a neighbor discourage them as they anticipate the time when their sharecropper parents from Kentucky can join them. In their crude sod house surrounded by mile of virgin prairie, they experience the responsibilities and the successes of real freedom as they develop their potentials and pursue their dreams.