Following a difficult freshman year, Scott Hudson is hoping that sophomore year will be easier, but after a disaster of a first week he finds himself faced with new challenges--including a particularly demanding English teacher, a school board member whose budget cutting is covering up a crime, and the discovery that his friendship with Lee, the Goth girl he met last year, is turning into something else entirely.

During the Vietnam War, when twelve-year-old Josh and his Air Force recruiter father move to a small town in the mountains of Pennsylvania and get a dog from the local shelter, Josh is forced to stop hanging back, and takes on the unfriendly town residents, a mountain, and the meanest boy in school.

Seventeen-year-old Greg has managed to become part of every social group at his Pittsburgh high school without having any friends, but his life changes when his mother forces him to befriend Rachel, a girl he once knew in Hebrew school who has leukemia.

A Quaker girl's diary reflects her experiences growing up in the Delaware River Valley of Pennsylvania and her capture by Lenape Indians in 1763.