Ten-year-old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father-- the renowned bandleader, H.E. Calloway of Grand Rapids.
In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.
In the mid- to late-1930s, Risky Chance grows from a spirited colt to a winning racehorse, but an injury and the Great Depression bring hardship that only a special little girl can help him overcome.
While working as a reporter during her summer vacation in 1935, Kit uncovers a mystery at the Cincinnati Zoo involving suspected break-ins at the monkey house.
Young Cassie Logan endures humiliation and witnesses the racism of the KKK as they embark on a cross-burning rampage, before she fully understands the importance her family attributes to having land of their own.
When her father kills himself after losing his money in the stock market crash of 1929, twelve-year-old Frances, now a penniless orphan, decides to hop aboard a freight train and live the life of a hobo.