In a series of poems, the speaker and his best friend meander through the summer after eighth grade, encountering for the first time in the local people of their economically depressed neighborhood enormous courage and vitality.
In their small New York town, two teenaged girls become friends while helping each other make sense of their families, neighbors, and selves as they approach adulthood in the years preceding World War II.
Soon after she and her mother come to the small Texas town of Kluney and experience a series of menacing events, Katie begins to suspect that there is something sinister going on.
Thirteen-year-old Rocky, self-conscious about the braces on her leg, has her life changed by the remarkable artist who comes to her small Kansas town to design a war memorial.
One by one, a number of people of varying ages and backgrounds transform a trash-filled inner-city lot into a productive and beautiful garden, and, in doing so, the gardeners are themselves transformed.
