With the help of his grandmother, his dead father's best friend, and his own best friend, a math genius, ten-year-old Mickey prepares to compete in the most important pool championship of his life, despite his mother's reservations.
When sixteen-year-old Hope and the aunt who has raised her move from Brooklyn to Mulhoney, Wisconsin, to work as waitress and cook in the Welcome Stairways diner, they become involved with the diner owner's political campaign to oust the town's corrupt mayor.
Sixteen-year-old Jenna gets a job driving the elderly owner of a chain of successful shoe stores from Chicago to Texas to confront the son who is trying to force her to retire, and along the way Jenna hones her talents as a saleswoman and finds the strength to face her alcoholic father.
The residents of Culpepper, despite their grand aspirations, have made little progress toward achieving their goals, but unexpected events and surprises put the ambitions of the residents of Culpepper to the test.
Between school and Al-Anon meetings, Jenna helps Mrs. Gladstone cope with escalating problems that result from the merger of Gladstone Shoes with Shoe Warehouse Corporation, while managing a new employee with a shoplifting record.
While compiling a genealogy of her family of successful attorneys, sixteen-year-old history buff Ivy Breedlove treks into the mountain wilderness to interview a reclusive aunt with whom she identifies and who in turn helps her to truly know herself and her family.
While compiling a genealogy of her family of successful attorneys, sixteen-year-old history buff Ivy Breedlove treks into the mountain wilderness to interview a reclusive aunt with whom she identifies and who in turn helps her to truly know herself and her family.
With the help of his grandmother, his dead father's best friend, and his own best friend, a math genius, ten-year-old Mickey prepares to compete in the most important pool championship of his life, despite his mother's reservations.
With the help of his grandmother, his dead father's best friend, and his own best friend, a math genius, ten-year-old Mickey prepares to compete in the most important pool championship of his life, despite his mother's reservations.
Tree, a six-foot-three-inch twelve-year-old, copes with his parents' recent divorce and his failure as an athlete by helping his grandfather, a Vietnam vet and recent amputee, and Sophie, a new girl at school.
