In Greenmarsh, Massachusetts, in 1774, thirteen-year-old Prudence keeps a diary of the troubles she and her family face as Tories surrounded by American patriots at the start of the American Revolution.

Jake narrates the story of his family's life in the Oklahoma dust bowl and the journey from their ravaged farm to California during the Great Depression.

A woman describes her experiences living with her husband in a sod house on the Dakota prairie.

A rising high school baseball star faces his most difficult challenge when his father is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Katie, whose family is not sympathetic to the rebel soldiers during the American Revolution, hides under the clothes in her mother's wedding trunk when they invade her home.

The Clark family keeps busy through all four seasons at their apple orchard, pruning dead branches at the end of winter, carrying the beehives among the trees in May, propping up branches heavy with summer fruit, and harvesting the apples in the fall.

A thirteen-year-old soldier, coming of age during the American Civil War, beats his drum to raise tunes and spirits and muffle the sounds of the dying.

A young Egyptian girl, whose brother secretly taught her to read and write, accuses her uncle of stealing grain from the temple and must run away from Thebes to survive.

A series of poems convey the feelings of a young girl whose sense of joy and security at the family's summer house is shattered when an older boy who lives nearby sexually abuses her.

An autumn thunderstorm sweeps across a farm, sending animals scurrying.