During their first summer apart, four teenage girls, best friends since earliest childhood, stay in touch through a shared pair of secondhand jeans that magically adapts to each of their figures and affects their attitudes to their different summer experiences.

With a bit of last summer's sand in the pockets, the Traveling Pants and the Sisterhood that wears them embark on their 16th summer. Bridget: Impulsively sets off for Alabama, wanting to both confront her demons about her family and avoid them all at once. Lena: Spends a blissful week with Kostos, making the unexplainable silence that follows his visit even more painful. Carmen: Is concerned that her mother is making a fool of herself over a man....

As their lives take them in different directions, Lena, Tibby, Carmen, and Bridget discover many more things about themselves and the importance of their relationship with each other. Once upon a time there were four girls. Young women, you might even say. And though their lives traveled in different directions, they loved each other very much. Once upon a time before that, these same girls found a pair of pants, wise and magical, and named them the...

After a seventh-grader discovers that the grooves in his Thigpen-brand blue jeans are encoded with a cry for help, he sets out to save the factory workers from greedy entrepreneur Howard Thigpen.

As their lives take them in different directions, Lena, Tibby, Carmen, and Bridget discover many more things about themselves and the importance of their relationship with each other.