Two teams of sixth-grade girls from small farming towns in Oregon meet on the baseball field in 1949 for a long-awaited game, but the presence of a Japanese American girl on the Bear Creek Ridge Mountaineers provokes the anger of the center-fielder on the rival team whose father was killed at Pearl Harbor.
Living in the inner city amidst guns and poverty, fifteen-year-old LaVaughn learns from old and new friends, and inspiring mentors, that life is what you make it--an occasion to rise to.
Sixteen-year-old learning-disabled Nick struggles to endure a life in which the other kids make fun of him; he has to take special classes, his date for the prom makes an excuse not to go with him, and he is haunted by the memory of his older sister who drowned while he was watching.
Sixteen-year-old learning-disabled Nick struggles to endure a life in which the other kids make fun of him, he has to take special classes, his date for the prom makes an excuse not to go with him, and he is haunted by the memory of his older sister who drowned while he was watching.
Fourteen-year-old LaVaughn, trying to earn the money for college, takes a job caring for the two children of Jolly, a single teenage mom, and must find the courage to make the right decision for all of them after Jolly is fired.
