Janesville, Wisconsin, 1994. Amy is both the worst and the best thing that's ever happened to Craig. He is an awkward, Dungeons & Dragons-playing geek; she is the beautiful, fiercely intelligent student-body president of their high school. They got together. Until Amy dumped him. Then got back together with him. Then dumped him again. Then got back together with him again. Over and over and over. Over their senior year, as Craig fights for his dream...

Twelve-year-old Mitch and his mother are spending the summer with his grandparents at Bird Lake after his parents separate, and ten-year-old Spencer and his family have returned to the lake where Spencer's little brother drowned long ago, and as the boys become friends and spend time together, each of them begins to heal.

Seven-year-old Billy Miller starts second grade with a bump on his head and a lot of worries, but by the end of the year he has developed good relationships with his teacher, his little sister, and his parents and learned many important lessons.

While serving in Afghanistan, Ben writes about incidents from his senior year in a small-town Wisconsin high school, when a neighbor he was trying to help out becomes the victim of an apparent hate crime and Ben falls under suspicion.

Young Caroline Quiner, who would grow up to become Laura Ingalls Wilder's mother, and her family have new adventures as the frontier outpost of Brookfield, Wisconsin, grows into a bustling town.

When Esther's family moves to a farm during the Great Depression, she soon learns that there are things much more important than that her superstitious mother rarely shows her any affection.

Unusual things begin to happen when a young girl finds a silver thimble doing the things called for by the farm, full of the sensory pleasures of summer on a farm in southern Wisconsin.

Fourteen-year-old Sarah keeps a journal of her pilgrimage to Rome with her eccentric grandmother, Z, her evolving relationship with best friend Curtis, and daily conversations with Curtis's sister and star athlete, D.J.

"In 1948, Nikko Spirakis, twelve, loves baseball but must get past his hard-working immigrant parents--and the rhino in the outfield--to become a batboy for the local minor league team." --

Left in small-town Wisconsin with a controlling aunt after her mother's death, Libby's very unhappy until she meets Peter and sparks fly, but when she learns that he's a rock star with his own family problems, her life changes forever.