Clare, working with her mother at Cossit Island Village, a living history museum reproduction of an early nineteenth-century town in New England, finds the opportunity to help two young runaways, and learns about a mystery from the past.
While trying to prove he can survive on an island off the coast of Maine, Chris Fossett meets Joellen Roth, who has come to the island with her father to work on a puffin research project, and the two become caught up in a mystery surrounding the island's 150-year-old ghost.
Merkka's longing for a solid conventional existence is threatened by the art projects of her stubborn sculptor grandmother, whose scrap metal collection offends the other citizens in their small Maine village.
While trying to deal with her new life with a stepfather and a younger foster sister, Sarah encounters a strange boy who claims to have traveled forward in time from the nineteenth century.
In 1947 in Maine, a raging fire that threatens their farm and the nearby town makes the members of Meg's extended family see their strained relationships in a new light.
As they work together to learn about the creature that Ben had found and to help others like it to survive, Ben, Kate, and Foster also gain a sense of their own individual abilities.
Siri, her uncle, and the Furfolk make a perilous journey across the sea to deliver an ice bear to the king as ransom for his lifting the banishment which his grandfather had imposed upon the people of Starkland.
