Twelve-year-old Jake Waters cannot wait to escape the small town of Patience, Kansas, until the arrival of a cursed toilet plunger causes him to reevaluate his feelings toward his family and its history.
Hank, Nathan, Jeremy, and Anabel deal with the realities of middle school basketball, including family pressure, a series of coaches with very different personalities and agendas, and what it means to be a team--and a friend.
In her Bangladesh village, ten-year-old Naimi excels at painting designs called alpanas, but to help her impoverished family financially she would have to be a boy--or disguise herself as one.
After her father leaves the family farm on Lost Mountain to be General Lee's guide, Addie finds ways to remember him-- even when he does not return at the end of the war.