Journalist Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary and their four children lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing...

The Dunnes have set off on a ten day boat trip, a trip that hopefully will bring them closer together, despite the fact that the father, Stuart is staying behind on land. But only an hour into the trip they're already falling apart. The teenage daughter plans to drown herself, and the teenage boy is high on drugs. Ten-year-old Ernie is near catatonic. But their mother Anne, with the help of her brother-in-law Jeff, is insistent on pulling everyone...

The story of Patty and Walter Berglund, a young, Midwestern couple, who start their promising life together with good intentions, wanting to be good partners, good parents, good neighbors, and good citizens. As time passes, however, the family they create loses its way, and the choices they make carry them into a future so at odds with the past that the differences seem irreconcilable. The idyllic lives of these civic-minded environmentalists come...

Abandoned by their father and living in poverty with their heartless stepmother in Louisiana, two sisters from the Philippines, twelve-year-old Sol and six-year-old Ming, learn the true meaning of family.

Ruth loves to bake cakes. When she is alone, she dreams up variations on recipes. When she meditates, she imagines herself in the warm, comforting center of a gigantic bundt cake. If there is a crisis, she bakes a cake; if there is a reason to celebrate, she bakes a cake. Ruth sees it as an outward manifestation of an inner need to nurture her family—which is a good thing, because all of a sudden that family is rapidly expanding. First, her...

Ree Dolly's father, an addict facing a drug charge who has put their house up as bond, has gone missing and Ree, who is caring for her two younger brothers and a mentally-ill mother, knows she must find him to save her family.

Isolated from friends who believe the worst because she has not been truthful with them, sixteen-year-old Annabel finds an ally in classmate Owen, whose honesty and passion for music help her to face and share what really happened at the end-of-the-year party that changed her life.

Trying to be a perfect student and friend is hard enough, but when Rachel develops a crush on her brother's tutor and lands a surprise date with Jeremy, she worries that she may be in over her head.

A patriarch and his three sons, in turn of the century Montana, find themselves at odds with each other when each brother falls in love with the fiance of one.

Fourteen-year-old Anthony "Antsy" Bonano learns about life, death, and a lot more when he tries to help a friend with a terminal illness feel hopeful about the future.