A dog with unusual communication talents loses his poet owner before rescuing two children trapped in a snowstorm and leading them to the poet's cabin, where the children explore the memories that the poet has left behind.

In the year before they become the orphans known as the Boxcar children, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny Alden live with their parents at Fair Meadow Farm, where, although times are hard, they take in a family who has been stranded in their car during a blizzard.