From 1965 through the present, an Indian American family adjusts to life in New York City, alternately fending off and welcoming challenges to their own traditions.

As Bridge makes her way through seventh grade on Manhattan's Upper West Side with her best friends, curvacious Em, crusader Tab, and a curious new friend--or more than friend--Sherm, she finds the answer she has been seeking since she barely survived an accident at age eight: "What is my purpose?"

Eleven-year-old Bo is used to it being just her and her mom in their cozy New York apartment, but when her mom gets married, Bo must adjust to her new sisters and a music-minded blended family that is much larger, louder, and more complex than she ever imagined.

In Brooklyn in 1951, a die-hard Giants fan teaches nine-year-old Maggie, who is a "Bums" (Dodgers) fan, how to use a technique to keep score of a baseball game which creates a special friendship between them.

Told in two voices, ballet dancer and private school student Isabelle Warren and poet and baseball star Alex Rosario grow closer after meeting on a subway, bonding over their parents' expectations and their own dreams.

Margot Sanchez is paying off her debts by working in her family's South Bronx grocery store, but she must make the right choices about her friends, her family, and Moises, the good looking but outspoken boy from the neighborhood.

Ruby and Oscar are caught up in a romance despite very different backgrounds and her having given up on music, while he is the protege of her father, a renowned composer.

In 1961, shy and overprotected eleven-year-old Shirley Alice Burns must begin speaking up if she is to do what she wants, including talking about her beloved, deceased father.

"With a new sibling (her fourth) on the way and a big piano recital on the horizon, Dominican-American Ana María Reyes tries to win a scholarship to a New York City private school"-- Provided by publisher.

Tandy Angel is, along with her brothers, a suspect in their parents' murder but having grown up under Malcolm and Maud Angel's perfectionist demands, Tandy decides she must clear the family name no matter what.