Ten-year-old Libby Aimes escapes her prison-like home by using a strange concoction of her father's, then tries to make her way to the boarding school of her dreams, aided by various people and animals.
A number of changes are taking place in fifth-grader Aaron's life. business at the family pet shop is declining, forcing his parents to consider selling the store; luxury condos are going up on the land that houses a community garden, displacing the homeless woman who lives there; and Aaron gets to know his seemingly perfect clasmate Sharon when she begins to tutor him in math.
In 1931, a young girl travels around the country performing on a tightrope during revival meetings held by her father, and seeking her own answers about God, her family, and her life of poverty and homelessness.
High school senior Sage tries to hide her mentally ill mother and get a popular football player to go out with her, but eventually she realizes that abandoning her real friends and letting herself be manipulated by others does not make her feel better after all.
In shock and unable to speak after being in a car accident in Oregon which killed his parents, seventeen-year-old Adam journeys across the country to his home in Rhode Island.
For more than a year, fourteen-year-old Kristin uses her diary to record her confused thoughts about the physical changes brought on by adolescence and the emotional strain on her family of living with the "ghost" of her beloved older brother who was physically and mentally destroyed while serving in Vietnam.
Lin O'Neil, a talented but shy girl growing up in Providence, Rhode Island, develops a close relationship with her Japanese grandmother, who shares Lin's gift of precognition.
For more than a year, fourteen-year-old Kristin uses her diary to record her confused thoughts about the physical changes brought on by adolescence and the emotional strain on her family of living with the "ghost" of her beloved older brother who was physically and mentally destroyed while serving in Vietnam.
