To make ends meet, twelve-year-old Ivy's mother goes to work as a waitress and takes in a boarder, a strange boy named Caleb who Ivy is sure is a liar.

Eighteen-year-old Emma, a freshman at Indiana University, has enough trouble trying to figure out relationships but when her father wins fifty million dollars in a lottery, life becomes even more confusing and complicated.

Ten-year-old Ben and eight-year-old Polly are used to their parents' struggle to make ends meet on their Indiana farm in the 1890s and look forward to a better life in North Dakota where they will be homesteaders, but the windswept prairie will provide new challenges.

Just before the beginning of World War I, eight-year-old Ruthie, who lives with her parents and six brothers on a farm in Indiana, wishes for a sister and tries to behave like the lady her mother wants her to be.

Sixth-grader Meg Summers and her family move to a new state every few years as her alcoholic father tries to get a fresh start, but when they land in Indiana and Meg finally makes a real friend and begins to talk about her family's problems, they all find the strength to try to change their destiny.