"While driving through Ohio in an old Pontiac, a young girl's Chinese immigrant parents spot watercress growing wild in a ditch by the side of the road. They stop the car, grabbing rusty scissors and an old paper bag, and the whole family wades into the mud to gather as much as they can. At first, she's embarrassed. Why can't her family just get food from the grocery store, like everyone else? But when her mother shares a bittersweet story of her...

"After tornadoes demolish Newfoundland, Ohio, Ellie, seventeen, is haunted by ghosts of the dead, as well as survivors struggling to cope, but a chance encounter shows her how to free the lingering spirits." --

Valena, her family, and dog live in rural Ohio, where she and her cousin Melinda share experiences that include seeing the aurora borealis, surviving a tornado, and going to an amazing circus.

Twelve-year-olds Jack and Louisa tell, in their separate voices, of his reluctant departure from New York City and Broadway stardom to live in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where new neighbor Louisa, a "musical theater nerd," urges him to audition for the local theater's production of "Into the Woods."

"Piano-prodigy Isabella, eleven, whose black father and white mother struggle to share custody, never feels whole, especially as racial tensions affect her school, her parents both become engaged, and she and her stepbrother are stopped by police." --

Fox Street means everything to Mo Wren, who is nearly eleven, and so she is very upset when a land developer offers to buy her father's house, especially since she has not yet found the fox she is sure lives in the nearby ravine.

Curious thirteen-year-old Bekah Yoder wonders about the strange behavior of the man who moves into the house next door, but even she does not suspect the danger that he brings to their neighborhood.

While trying to focus on a winning soccer season, thirteen-year-old Tess becomes involved in local politics when she learns that all sports programs at her school will be stopped unless a tax levy is passed.

When twelve-year old Rebecca Carter's father brings a Native American accused of murder into their 1812 Ohio settlement town, Rebecca, witnessing the town's reaction to the Indian, struggles with the idea that an innocent man may be convicted and sentenced to death.

Ohio sixth-grader Isaac "Itch" Fitch strives to fit in, but everything seems to be going wrong, even before a school lunch trade sends his best friend, Sydney, to the hospital. --