Though twins Kit and Jordy both would like to be accepted by the sixth graders in their small Missouri town, they discover that helping a lonely retarded man is more important.
Eleven-year-old Clara's life is enriched by her friendship with the vibrant Nettie, whose family is so different from her own, but then a serious brain condition threatens to change Nettie forever.
Aspiring to make the varsity track team, thirteen-year-old Harold neglects his brain-damaged friend Billy, until a crisis leads him to transfer his dreams of championship to Billy.
In 1948, newly-moved to the Bronx, eleven-year-old Skip longs to shed her responsibility for her mentally handicapped older sister and give her whole attention to her new friendship with the bold and daring girl who sems to run the neighborhood.
When a bitter mountain man cannot accept his twelve-year-old son's mental retardation, the boy wanders into the wilderness and finds in a stranger the father he has never had.
Sixth grader Maggie feels burdened by her seven-year-old sister Hannie, who is slightly brain-damaged and believes that a toy unicorn has magical powers, until one afternoon a crisis shows her how special Hannie is.
While his family is visiting a remote Australian valley Kenny, a gentle young man with the mind of a three-year-old, is possessed by a hate-filled, long-dead convict, thus becoming a pawn of vengeful ghosts bent on reenacting an old tragedy.
Through three turbulent decades, Forrest rides a tide of events that whisks him from physical disability to football stardom, from Vietnam hero to shrimp tycoon, from White House honors to the arms of his one true love.
