The story follows a young and adventurous girl named Abilene who is sent to Manifest, Kansas by her father in the summer of 1936.

Sensing that Abilene feels abandoned by her father, the diviner tells her a story of the past about two boys in Manifest in 1918 called Jinx and Ned.

They sell a healing elixir and raised most of the money, but someone reveals their plans to the mine owners, causing them to return and put everyone back to work.

A government official, the nephew of a resident of Manifest, tricks one of the mine owners into buying part of the land up for sale because of the "healing spring" he could use to make a fortune.

The town celebrates their triumph over the mine owners, only to be crushed by news of the death of the well-known Ned in St-Dzier, France, on October 8, 1918.

Soon after, Spanish influenza kills many people in Manifest and the town becomes the run-down, battered outpost Abilene knows.

After sending a telegram to her father, feigning ill herself, she discovered that the Rattler was a story someone made up after seeing a nun and her rattling rosary in the woods at night.

The "spy" they happened to find was the undertaker, the person who had revealed the town's trick to the mine owners almost twenty years ago.

Abilene's father returned to Manifest and found that his daughter wasn't ill, and after she told him about knowing about his past, he understood her when she asked him to stay.