Thirteen-year-old Sunny, accompanied by a stray dog, takes advantage of a windfall to travel from her Nebraska foster home to Enumclaw, Washington, to find the twin sister from whom she was separated at age three.
Eleven-year-old Primrose living in a small fishing village in British Columbia recounts her experiences and all that she learns about human nature and the unpredictability of life in the months after her parents are lost at sea.
A troublesome twelve-year-old orphan, staying with an elderly artist who needs her, remembers the only other time she was happy in a foster home, with a family that truly seemed to care about her.
Shares a story about Mickey, a young girl in the foster care system who becomes upset when she and her little brother are sent to different homes, and provides information about why children go into foster care, what happens in foster care, how people become foster parents, and how kids leave foster care.
Fifteen-year-old Cat Kincaid, having failed to fit into a series of foster homes and finding herself stuck on a farm with an elderly female beekeeper, secretly longs for a place to be herself, not somebody she has invented.
When fourteen-year-old Stephen, his new foster brother Earl, and his friends are caught spray-painting graffiti on a train, they are sentenced to community service at a retirement home.
Even after entering the foster care system, Jewel is the one who takes care of her mother and, shutting herself off from the vulnerability of closeness to others, is unaware of the positive influence she has on those around her.
While lost in a tunnel at Carlsbad Cavern, thirteen-year-old Jack, eleven-year-old Ashley, and their eight-year-old foster brother, Sam, think bats and darkness are their worst problems, until they stumble across thieves.
