For sixteen-year-old Lana life is often difficult, with a flirtatious foster father, an ice queen foster mother, a houseful of special needs children to care for, and bullies harassing her, until the day she ventures into an antique shop and buys a drawing set that may change her life.
Fourteen-year-old Hope visits her new foster mother's Nebraska farm and, through old letters, a diary, and stories, gets a vivid picture of the past in the voices of four girls her age who lived there in 1869, 1900, 1936, and 1960.
After breaking his leg, eleven-year-old Nate feels useless because he cannot work on the family farm in nineteenth-century Nebraska, so when his father brings home an orphan boy to help with the chores, Nate feels even worse.
Natalie and her playboy fianc? Pierre, a French couple touring America by bus, find a whole different way of life, and perhaps love, when they become stranded in the very small town of Seldom, Nebraska.