In Plymouth Colony in the 1630s, John continually disappoints his father, Governor William Bradford, during a difficult time as the colony faces its first murder and subsequent trial.
Because he had been unable to fight off the gator which injured his father, fourteen-year-old Thrasher joins the Confederate Army hoping to prove his manhood.
Fifteen-year-old Whichaway, son of a stone-faced Arizona rancher, legs broken in an accident atop a windmill, struggles to survive after cattle rustlers have left him to die.
In the late 1800s while on a cattle drive which takes him north from Texas, seventeen-year-old Wylie learns that it is no longer necessary to run from the father he never knew.
Thirteen-year-old Whitman has to deal with the anger he feels towards his father when his parents separate, his own interest in several girls, and the heady feeling of acting in his first play.
After receiving an apparent crank call from a man claiming to have committed murder, fifteen-year-old Andy finds his close relationship with his father crumbling as he struggles to make everyone believe him.
While training for a triathlon, seventeen-year-old Bo attends an anger management group at school which leads him to examine his relationship with his father.
In 1899, ten-year-old Robbie, son of a preacher in a small Vermont town, gets himself into all kinds of trouble when he decides to give up being Christian in order to make the most of his life before the end of the world.
