Valerie Tripp

Tired of doing chores and longing for adventure during the Great Depression, Kit meets a hobo and decides to hop a freight train.

In 1934, during the Depression, Kit's cantankerous uncle comes to live in the Cincinnati boardinghouse run by her parents, enlisting her aid in transcribing his complaining letters to the editor of the local newspaper and inspiring her to write a different kind of letter of her own.

Even though he is away serving in an English hospital during World War II, Molly's father finds a way to make the family Christmas very special.

When she discovers that Nellie and her sisters have been sent to an orphanage, Samantha, now living with her aunt and uncle in New York City, tries to help her friends as much as she can.

While spending the summer at Grandmary's summer home on Goose Lake, Samantha and her twin cousins decide to visit the island where Samantha's parents were drowned during a storm.

Christmas in Williamsburg means a dancing party at the Governor's Palace for Felicity, but her mother becomes very ill and cannot finish the special blue gown.

Josefina hopes to become a "curandera" or healer like Tía Magdalena, and she is tested just before her tenth birthday when a friend receives a potentially fatal snakebite.

When an English girl comes to stay at Molly's during World War II, she and Molly learn to bridge their differences and ultimately enjoy a wonderful, mutual birthday party.

During a visit to her grandfather's plantation in Virginia during the summer of 1775, Felicity's loyalty is torn between her father and Ben, her father's apprentice who needs her help as he runs away to join George Washington's army of Patriots.