While stranded in the Arizona territory in the 1880's a thirteen-year-old girl finds herself the owner of a traveling hotel.

With his father and brother serving in the Confederate Army and the rest of his family murdered in a Comanche raid of their west Texas farm, 13-year-old Lewallen seeks to free himself and his younger sister from their Indian captivity.

In 1861 twelve-year-old Truth, a Quaker girl from Indiana, is staying with relatives who run a North Carolina station of the Underground Railroad, when her world is changed by the beginning of the Civil War.

A preacher's daughter with lots of curiosity and a penchant for getting into trouble has an eventful year and a half, as all the predictions of a fortune-teller at a Texas county fair in 1898 come true.

In the years 1893, sensible thirteen-year-old Melinda, finding herself stranded in the Colorado town of Goldendale, promptly becomes involved in the townspeople's lives and assorted problems.

When, in 1895, their father's business failure forces the family to live in their beach home on the peninsula just above the Oregon border, twelve-year-old Marcella and her younger brother and sister find the experience much more rewarding than they imagined, especially when they become friends with the numerous members of the Kimball family.