Eighteen-year-old Chris struggles to deal with two shocks that have changed his life, his meeting the mother who left him and his father when he was ten and his discovery that he has gotten his girlfriend pregnant.
The night before Jess goes off to France for a university year abroad, her parents and grandparents gather to celebrate and share the stories of their lives.
In alternating voices, thirteen-year-old Rosa and her mother are trying to adopt a Tanzanian child in England, while in Tanzania, nine-year-old Abela watches her family die and her uncle illegally sends her to England, in the hopes of selling her.
While at sea during a freak storm near his island home in the far north, a fisherman finds a baby girl, and though he and his wife love her as their own, they realize that they may not be able to keep her from returning to the sea.
When the other children bring their pets to school, Rachel feels left out because she can't bring in the horse that pulls the barge on which she lives.
A boy finds that he cannot ride his new bicycle during the day, only in his dreams at night, until one day he finally discovers the magic he needs to ride it in real life.
