In the early 1900s, thirteen-year-old Tyler encounters vicious hunters whose actions threaten to destroy the Everglades ecosystem and, as a result, joins the battle to protect that fragile environment.
A boastful hamster with exceptional talent as an escape artist recounts his experiences chewing, wriggling, or squeezing his way out of various closed areas in his quest for the great Outside.
In 1828, while traveling from Illinois to Kentucky, twelve-year-old Jesse and her two brothers and sister lose their parents to the milk sickness and must try to finish the dangerous journey by themselves.
In 1836, fourteen-year-old Roxana undertakes a dangerous journey up the Ohio River to help her beloved servant, Joss, and Joss's fiance, a runaway slave, escape to freedom, aided by Roxana's former teacher Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Sent to Camp Happy Harmony to learn how to get along with each other, pairs of brothers and sisters chronicle in letters home how they come to suspect the intentions of the singing family running the camp.
In 1944, while her brother is overseas fighting in World War II, eleven-year-old Margaret gets a new view of the school bully Gordy when she finds him hiding his own brother, an army deserter, and decides to help him.
