Eleven-year-old Martha tries to keep her family together after her mother's death as her father struggles with alcoholism.

As three teenaged sisters struggle to cope with their father's sudden death, they find they must reexamine friendships, lifelong dreams, and their relationships with each other and their father.

After her mother's death, Julie goes to live with Aunt Cordelia, a spinster schoolteacher, where she experiences many emotions and changes as she grows from seven to eighteen.

Fifteen-year-old Catherine and her father take their first joint vacation in Nova Scotia and finally get to know each other.

While eighteen-year-old Janie ponders her future with Cabe, knowing that her being a dream-catcher means eventual blindness and crippling, she encounters her past as the father she never knew is hospitalized with brain trauma and seems to need her help.

When Maddie joins her journalist aunt on vacation in Mexico, she finds a rival for Ryan's affection, a friend who has a drinking problem, and most important, a new trust in God.

In Florida, Anna Casey lives with what she hopes is the last in a long line of foster mothers, and Mica Delano lives with her father on their small boat, and when the two of them begin corresponding, they discover they have a lot in common.

Sixteen-year-old Claire is unable to face her fears about a recurrence of her leukemia, her eating disorder, her need to fit in with the popular crowd on Hackett Island, and her mother's alcoholism until the enigmatic Lani Garver helps her get control of her life at the risk of his own. The close-knit residents of Hackett Island have never seen anyone quite like Lani Garver. Everything about this new kid is a mystery: Where does Lani come from? How...

After a Winter Ball that was a mix of fun and worry, seventeen-year-old DJ sets aside her hope for a quiet Christmas and joins Taylor in Las Vegas, although she fears she will do nothing but try to keep her roommate out of trouble.