Sent to San Francisco to live with her beloved aunt and uncle, newly orphaned Emily expectantly enters their once-happy mansion only to find unimaginable horrors.
Twelve-year-old Lucas Whitaker, orphaned in 1849 when his entire family is claimed by consumption, takes a job as an apprentice with Doc Beecher, and learns the truth about the difference between superstition and science.
Homer P. Figg escapes from his wretched foster home in Pine Swamp, Maine, and sets out to find his beloved older brother, Harold, who has been illegally sold into the Union Army.
After a fire kills her parents, eleven-year-old Martine must leave England to live with her grandmother on a wildlife game reserve in South Africa, where she befriends a mythical white giraffe.
Sisters Flora and Ruby move to Camden Falls after the death of their parents to live with their grandmother who owns a sewing shop; and the girls find it easy to make friends and feel at home.
