Curley Hines has lost his father, mother, and brother to coal mining, and now he lives with his grandfather in the Appalachian mountains of Wonder Gap, Kentucky--but when the mining company prepares to destroy their mountain he must use the words his grandfather has taught him to save Red Hawk Mountain, even if it means losing the life he loves.

Thirteen-year-old Zinnia Taylor uncovers family secrets and self truths while clearing a mysterious settler trail that begins on her family's farm in Kentucky.

Natalie's last summer in her small Kentucky hometown is off to a magical start, until she starts seeing the "wrong things.' At first, they're just momentary glimpses her front door is red instead of its usual green, there's a preschool where the garden store should be. But then her whole town disappears for hours, fading away into rolling hils and grazzing buffalo, and Nat knows something isn't right.

"Hadley is an angry girl: angry at her mother for embezzling money, angry at her estranged older sister, Beth, whom she has to live with while her mother is in jail, angry at having to move to Kentucky away from her friends, and angry at the world because she has retinitis pigmentosa and is slowly going blind; but then she meets Lila, a rescued pit bull who has not responded to anyone else--so if Hadley can train Lila, maybe the dog can get adopted...

Having been forced to act as mother and housekeeper during Mama's illness, twelve-year-old Amanda has a holiday in Memphis, far removed from the Depression drudgery of her Kentucky mountain family, and finds her world expanding even as she grows to understand and appreciate her own background.

Upon her mother's death, eleven-year-old Wavie Conley must go live with a scheming aunt in the Kentucky town her mother left behind.