Rachel Lee is enjoying a summer of baking class and flirting with her almost-boyfriend Evan until a rival cleaning business comes to town, stealing her mother's clients, and she must focus on protecting Lee Cleaners rather than Whit, her cute new classmate.

When fifteen-year-old Ben moves to small-town Colorado and a Christian school, his atheism sets him apart and leads to bullying and misunderstandings, and with his brother serving in Iraq and his sister away at college Ben is on his own in the struggle to find his place without compromising who he is.

In 1910, just before the earth passes through the tail of Halley's Comet, thirteen-year-old Hope McDaniels, whose father is a magician in a traveling vaudeville show, tries to earn enough money to quit the circuit by selling "anti-comet pills," with the help of fellow-performer Buster Keaton.