Anna's teen years bring maturity and fulfillment as she experiences the birth and death of a loved and loving hydrocephalic brother, changing ideas about character in both boyfriends and girlfriends, and working with a child with Down's syndrome.
When disaster strikes their family, Mamo and Dani are forced to live as street urchins in the slums of an Ethiopian city, where they are taken into a gang led by a tough but likable boy named Million.
Young Adam eagerly joins the Crusade to reclaim the Holy Land in the service of a local knight, while a doctor's apprentice in the camp of Sultan Saladin hopes to avoid engaging in conflict with the invading crusaders.
Her father's involvement with the Kurdish resistance movement in Iraq forces thirteen-year-old Tara to flee with her family over the border into Iran, where they face an unknown future.
In seventeenth-century Scotland, Maggie Blair is sentenced to be hanged as a witch but escapes to the home of her uncle, placing him and his family in great danger as she risks her life to save them all from the King's men.
During the Israeli occupation of Ramallah in the West Bank of Palestine, twelve-year-old Karim and his friends create a secret place for themselves where they can momentarily forget the horrors of war.
