In 1945, Gordy's grandmother takes him and his family into her North Carolina home after his abusive father is arrested, and he just begins to respond to his grandmother's loving discipline when his father returns.
When he goes to spend the summer with his great-aunt in the family's old house, eleven-year-old Drew is drawn eighty years into the past to trade places with his great-great-uncle who is dying of diphtheria.
In the nineteenth century, ten-year-old Florence Crutchfield leaves a London orphanage to live with her great-uncle, great-aunt, and sickly cousin James, but she soon realizes the home has another resident, who means to do her and James harm.
With their mother dead and their home burned, a thirteen-year-old boy and his little sister set out across Virginia in search of relatives during the final days of the Civil War.
In 1945, Gordy's grandmother takes him and his family into her North Carolina home after his abusive father is arrested, and he just begins to respond to his grandmother's loving discipline when his father returns.
While staying at the remote and reputedly haunted Maine inn run by her father and pregnant stepmother, sixteen-year-old Cynda feels increasingly isolated from her father's new family and finds solace in the attentions of a charming but mysterious guest.
When he and his younger sister move in with their older brother after their grandmother dies, thirteen-year-old Gordy finds himself caught between the boy he was when he lived with his abusive father and the boy his grandmother was helping him become.
Forced to accompany their parents on their honeymoon in Spain, new stepsisters Amy and Felix find the animosity between them escalating especially when Felix's boasting about family wealth to a stranger results in their kidnapping.
While staying at the remote and reputedly haunted Maine inn run by her father and pregnant stepmother, sixteen-year-old Cynda feels increasingly isolated from her father's new family and finds solace in the attentions of a charming but mysterious guest.
When economic reasons cause two families to merge into a crowded household on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, more personal problems exacerbate the tense living conditions.
