Ethan and his friends come up with a plan to get rid of the sleazy reality television show that has taken over their arts high school in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

When Gabe, aka Chunk, a teenager who derives his greatest satisfaction from playing in the school band, finds out that the cheerleaders have appropriated the band's usual source of income (funds from the soda vending machine) for a new dance team, he takes on the school's social hierarchy to fight for the right of band geeks.

Having been abducted at age seven, abandoned, a foster child, and homeless, Ethan, now sixteen, is happy to be home until his brother's suspicion and his own inability to remember something unspeakable from his early childhood begin to tear the family apart.

Grace Divine, almost seventeen, learns a dark secret when her childhood friend--practically a brother--returns, upsetting her pastor-father and the rest of her family, around the time strange things are happening in and near their small Minnesota town.

"Laura and her family find a new home in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, where the nearby creek and swimming hole lure Laura with dangerous, yet thrilling adventures. Too soon, their life is threatened when prairie fires and other strange events jeopardize their crops."

"Spanning two centuries and two continents, [this] is the story of five generations of young people caught in a spiral of death and exile between Liberia and the United States"--