To escape rumored terrors in Kansas, New Yorkers Jack and Frances, eleven, and Frances's brother Harold, seven, jump off an orphan train in 1899 and help new friend Alexander to build Wanderville, a safe place for homeless children.
In 1878, twelve-year-old Ida Kate and her widowed father welcome a mail-order bride and her baby to their Kansas homestead, but Ida Kate soon suspects that the bride is not the woman with whom Papa has corresponded.
Clark Kent, who will later be known as Superman, has a crush on the new Spanish teacher at his high school--and so does Lex Luthor who, when he discovers that she can read minds, is determined to find out what she knows about Clark's secret.
Sixteen-year-old Mary-Elizabeth "Mike" Szabo, struggling to understand her father's suicide and her own homosexuality, reaches the breaking point when she falls in love with Xanadu, an exotic girl who has moved to small Coalton, Kansas, from the big city.