At a Vermont elementary school, April Fools' Day takes on a sinister tone when a teacher goes missing and several suspects emerge, among them the teacher's fiance and a missing mutant chick.
Juanita and Miguel's great aunt, T?ia Lola, comes from the Dominican Republic to help take care of them after their parents divorce, and soon she is so involved in their small Vermont community that when her visa expires, the whole town turns out to support her.
Although ten-year-old Miguel is at first embarrassed by his colorful aunt, Tia Lola, when she comes to Vermont from the Dominican Republic to stay with his mother, his sister, and him after his parents' divorce, he learns to love her.
At a New England boarding school, a sex scandal is about to break. Even more shocking than the sexual acts themselves is the fact that they were caught on videotape. A Pandora's box of revelations, the tape triggers a chorus of voices--those of the men, women, teenagers, and parents involved in the scandal--that details the ways in which lives can be derailed or destroyed in one foolish moment.
During the summer of 1932 when Lily is twelve years old, she is granted her two greatest wishes, to be far from the sister who torments her and to have a horse of her own, but she does not expect either the tragic events that bring this about or their consequences.
When twelve-year-old Ellie inherits an old Vermont farm from her cruel and heartless grandmother Aurelia, she reads a set of diaries written by an ancestor and discovers secrets from the past.
New life abounds in the Vermont springtime along with baby groundhogs in her pony's field, but knowing how her father feels about them, ten-year-old Keeker decides to stage a "Save the Groundhogs" play.
