Sixteen-year-old Maya and seventeen-year-old Lochan tell, in their separate voices, of their confusion and longing as they fall in love with one another after years of functioning as parents to three younger siblings due to their alcoholic mother's neglect.

With help from his friends, New York City high school student Kyle Parker sets out to save his parents' marriage by trying to get his father's novel published.

While recovering from rheumatic fever and a move from Chicago to a small southern town, fourteen-year-old Jon becomes involved with a troubled young girl's recreation of an ancient druid ceremony.

"Phoebe navigates fear, grief, and hope for recovery about when her mother has a ruptured brain aneurysm while their family is on vacation, and right after her mother shares that she's planning to leave Phoebe's father"--

"A young girl fights to keep her mama out of the mental ward, her home away from the bank, and herself out of the orphanage after her father abandons her and her mother in depression era Alabama"--

With his father in jail and his mother working full-time, fourteen-year-old Billy Baggs finds himself in charge of running the family farm in northern Minnesota and having to give up the thing he loves most--baseball.

When her uncle agrees to pay the tuition at a private boarding school, seventeen-year-old Pearl hopes to escape the homelessness and drama of life with her mother, a former rock star who has ruined her life with drugs.

In a small town near Chicago in 1953, twelve-year-old Tommy faces escalating problems at home, among his Catholic school friends, and with the threat of a communist living nearby, but taking over his hospitalized sister's paper route introduces him to neighbors who he comes to rely on for help.

Eight-year-old Sammy tries to come to terms with several dificult situations including the death of his dog, the divorce of his aunt and uncle, the suicide of his best friend's brother, coping with his terminally ill grandmother, and cheating on a school test.

On the anniversary of his sister's murder, Leo, tormented by his mother's insane accusations and his own waking nightmares, kidnaps a wealthy girl intending to kill her, but instead their long night together helps them both face their futures.