When twelve-year-old Ellie and her family lose livelihood and move to a mountain cabin in 1934, she quickly learns to be an outdoors woman and, when needed, a healer.

In 1977, middle-schooler Josie secretly takes on her aging grandfather's financial problems while also helping her friend Winky bail his Major League Baseball idol out of the town jail.

After being orphaned during the influenza epidemic of 1918, eleven-year-old Lydia Pierce and her fourteen-year-old brother are taken by their grieving uncle to be raised in the Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake. Includes author's note about the Shakers.

During World War II, Felicity Bathburn is living in Bottlebay, Maine, with her eccentric relatives and their foster child Derek, whom she has grown to love, but when a man claiming to be Derek's true father arrives and starts asking all sorts of strange questions Felicity becomes suspicious of his motives.

After Lucy P. Simmons's parents drown, Lucy must find a way to keep her greedy aunt and uncle from taking her family's house. A mysterious woman who seems to come from the sea, as well as the house itself, come to Lucy's aid.