Eleven Boy Scouts, their leaders, and some new friends camping at Halape, Hawaii, in 1975, find their survival skills put to the test when a massive earthquake strikes, followed by a tsunami.
Fifteen-year-old Milly Kaufman is an average American teenager until Pablo, a new student at her school, inspires her to search for her birth family in his native country.
Anita, a typically self-absorbed twelve-year-old living in the Dominican Republic in the early 1960s, is surprised to discover her family is involved in the underground movement to end the bloody rule of the dictator, General Trujillo.
To a thirteen-year-old Vermont farm boy whose father slaughters pigs for a living, maturity comes early as he learns "doing what's got to be done," especially regarding his pet pig who cannot produce a litter.
After his experiences surviving alone in the Canadian wilderness, sixteen-year-old Brian finds it increasingly difficult to live as a normal high school student and begins planning to return to the place where he feels he really belongs.
In 1949, thirteen-year-old Francine goes to Catholic school in Los Angeles where she becomes best friends with a girl who questions authority and is frequently punished by the nuns, causing Francine to question her own values.
