During the yellow fever epidemic in Memphis in 1878, twelve-year-old Eli and Addie, a young child he befriends, struggle to survive with the help of Addie's ghost-mother and a girl who works at the busy graveyard.
Jessie, a young girl living in the Oklahoma dust bowl during the Depression, tries to tame a wild dog and help her father recover from a nervous breakdown.
Even as Christmas approaches and Gail longs to hear that her soldier father has not been killed in World War II, the sixth grader helps bring her handicapped uncle back to life.
Fifteen-year-old Ophelia, orphaned and emotionally isolated, develops an unlikely friendship with elderly recluse, Portia McKay, which may lead to redemption for both.
After participating in a cruel prank on a classmate, fourteen-year-old Robin and her mother move to Oklahoma, where Robin is mistaken for the substitute principal and receives a new perspective on bullying.
Always overshadowed by his competitive older brother, especially in their work as mule drivers on the Erie Canal, fourteen-year-old Howard finally finds the courage to pursue his dreams of becoming an educator after he learns about sign language and teaches it to his deaf friend in nineteenth-century New York State.
Even as Christmas approaches and Gail longs to hear that her soldier father has not been killed in World War II, the sixth grader helps to restore her handicapped uncle's will to live.
In 1921, fifteen-year-old Noble Chase hates the sheriff of Wekiwa, Oklahoma, and is more than willing to cross him to help his best friend, a black man, who is injured during race riots in nearby Tulsa.
Left in charge of the family by his father who joins the Revolutionary War effort, thirteen-year-old Joey undergoes such great changes that he fears he may be betraying his beloved parent.
In alternating passages, a young White House seamstress named Bella and the actor John Wilkes Booth describe the events that lead to the latter's assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
