When he finds a lost beagle in the hills behind his West Virginia home, Marty tries to hide it from his family and the dog's real owner, a mean-spirited man known to shoot deer out of season and to mistreat his dogs.
After Marty Preston worked so hard to earn the dog Shiloh, he had hoped that his troubles with Judd Travers were over. He could not rescue all the dogs that Judd mistreated, but since shiloh was the one who ran away and came to him, Shiloh was the one he loved.
Sixth-grader Marty and his family try to help their rough neighbor, Judd Travers, change his mean ways, even though their West Virginia community continues to expect the worst of him.
Once again the Hatford brothers and the Malloy sisters find themselves pitted against each other when embarrassing pictures of the boys turn up in the girls' basement, and the boys try to figure out how to get them back.
The Benson boys return to Buckman for spring vacation and concoct a prank involving a non-existent ghost, continuing the practical joke war between the Hatford boys and the Malloy girls.
Despite a New Year's resolution to be nice to their neighbors the Malloy girls, the Hatford boys find themselves continuing their rivalry and war of practical jokes.
Disgusted that a family with three girls moves into the house across the river, nine-year-old Wally and his three brothers declare a practical joke war on the girls.
In March of 1941, when a severe blizzard suddenly hits Bismarck, North Dakota, a girl trying to save her stranded father and brother inadvertently helps the man who killed her mother four years before.
