When his wounded father is sent home early from Vietnam, Luke finds it difficult to adjust to the troubled, emotionally shaken man who seems so unlike the fearless hero of his dreams.
Bernie and Sean, a young boy at odds with his father that she secretly befriends, devise a fake kidnapping that turns out to be more successful than they expected and sets off a massive search that includes the FBI.
Ten-year-old Martin feels as though he's skating on thin ice in all his relationships, but things really get bad when his teacher begins dating his divorced mother.
After his mother is killed and his sister is badly injured in a car accident, seventh-grader Matt faces life with a new family and a deep feeling of anger.
Ellie's attempt to avenge her cat Bob, who has been killed and eaten by a marauding coyote, backfires when the trap she sets injures a neighborhood dog, thus heightening her awareness of life, death, and nature's way.
Toby, the child of a "slow" father and a brain-damaged mother, uses his very normal ten-year-old wits to survive peer pranks and adult do-gooders who want him placed in a foster home.
When his wounded father is sent home early from Vietnam, Luke finds it difficult to adjust to the troubled, emotionally shaken man who seems so unlike the fearless hero of his dreams.
When a band of armed men creates a disruption in the small Mexican town where Tom and his younger sister Philippa are vacationing with their parents, they flee into the hills with their new friend Ignacio.
