"Seeing the elephant" is a nineteenth-century American phrase meaning to have new, and often horrific, experiences. Civil War soldiers would often state they'd "seen the elephant" on witnessing combat for the first time.

Born in 1838, thirteen-year-old Betsy Loveless had already "seen the elephant" many times during her young life. She survived the horrors of Mormon oppression when those peculiar people lived near her hometown of Carthage, Illinois, and saw it again while traversing the Oregon Trail in 1848. Miss Loveless "sees the elephant" once more after she touches a wavy phantasm that transports her from 1852 to 2015. Adjusting to the ways of the future is a rough lot. It only gets worse when her new best friend becomes mesmerized with Mormonism by some proselytizing classmates—especially since she knows the truth about Joseph Smith and the Mormon church.