Seven-year-old Billy Miller starts second grade with a bump on his head and a lot of worries, but by the end of the year he has developed good relationships with his teacher, his little sister, and his parents and learned many important lessons.
Wealthy businessman Ralph Truitt advertises for a reliable wife to make a home for him on his estate in rural Wisconsin in the early twentieth century and although he knows immediately that Catherine Land is not the woman she presented herself to be, he decides to marry her anyway in what becomes a risky arrangement for them both.
Six-year-old Caroline and her older sister Martha share wash-day chores, playing in the snow, and the first day of school in their home on the Wisconsin frontier.
High school junior D.J. staggers under the weight of caring for her badly injured brother, her responsibilities on the dairy farm, a changing relationship with her friend Brian, and her own athletic aspirations.
Charli's impulsive uncle, Will Crandall, decides to buy the town's abandoned, possibly haunted castle and fix it up as a bed-and-breakfast, but Charli and Sophia, a clairvoyant orphan who has come to stay with the Crandall family, know his plan is somehow dangerous.
