Eighth grader Brett McCarthy finds herself redefining her life after a practical joke gets her suspended, ruins her friendships, and forces her to discover what is really important in her life.
In 1942, fourteen-year-old Jill goes to stay with her grandmother on the coast of Maine, where she is introduced to the often gossipy nature of small-town life, and discovers that the war is closer than she thought.
Thirteen-year-old Elin can't imagine living anywhere but the island off the coast of Maine where her father is lightkeeper, until the night in 1941 when she awakes to the sound of German torpedoes while her parents are on the mainland.
Thirteen-year-old Siena's visions of the past intensify when her family moves to the Maine coast hoping her little brother will begin speaking, and she connects with residents of the house from many years earlier who faced a similar problem.
Lena looks forward to receiving the government-mandated cure that prevents the delirium of love and leads to a safe, predictable, and happy life, until ninety-five days before her eighteenth birthday and her treatment, when she falls in love.
Maine seventh-grader Madison and her two best friends, who are being mocked and belittled by former members of their group, decide to conduct a ritual to purge their tormentors from their lives, with unexpected results.
When twelve-year-old Lise spends the summer on an island in Maine with her self-reliant mother and bright--but oddly mute--younger brother, her formerly safe world is complicated by an aged Indian neighbor, her mother's childhood friend, and a hurricane.
Fifteen-year-old Will Ames and his sister Cassie go to stay with their sister in nearby Wiscasset, Maine, after a disabling accident ruins Will's plans for a career in farming.
Thirteen-year-old Aggie Wing documents the events of her summer in Ludwig, Maine, where she and her brother stay with their ninety-one-year-old grandfather while their mother, a writer of romance novels, is away doing research.
