Eighteen-year-old Grace, raised in a fundamentalist home, makes a bid for personal freedom by becoming involved in an affair with a much older college professor, and soon learns she has traded in one kind of prison for another.
When nine-year-old Mary Margaret tells everyone at school her name is Mary Margaret Mary, she discovers that the problems lying causes makes life too complicated, especially with Christmas coming.
Mary Margaret has definite ideas about what is going to happen when she and her family arrive at the Lazy K dude ranch, but her dreams of being an immediate success at horseback riding come crashing down when her instructor, Kansas, grounds her in the Kiddie Corral.
An imaginative boy pretends to be a firefighter, policeman, construction worker, and other busy people, but he realizes that it is important to take time to give his mom a hug.
Although he reminds his mother that everybody makes mistakes, and provides a lot of examples, young Jack is still in hot water for making three big mistakes while playing with his younger sister on their uncle's wedding day.
An imaginative boy pretends to be a firefighter, policeman, construction worker, and other busy people, but he realizes that it is important to take time to give his mom a hug.
Mary Margaret is hoping to be Cinderella in the community play but must face the fact that the lead will be played by Ellie, the new girl in class who seems to do everything right.
During the summer that she turns nine, Mary Margaret tries very hard to persuade her parents to let her have a pet, makes a new neighbor friend and helps her brother keep an old one, and looks forward to the new baby's arrival because then her mother will be less "crabby.".
