Priscilla Cummings

After breaking out of juvenile detention, fourteen-year-old Digger stops his trek across Maryland at a campground where he recovers from injuries, cares for little Luke, works with smart and pretty Nora, and begins to understand how his behavior and choices shape his life.

High school freshman Kate has a lot on her mind, what with taking care of her heartbroken mother and looking after the family chicken farm in Maryland, but she promised her dying father to look after her older brother who is just back from juvenile detention--and this year that seems to involve paying off the bullies at school by doing their school work.

When Grace's family is evicted from their Washington, D.C., apartment just before Christmas 1932, and she and her younger brothers are sent to the Mission, Grace wonders what will become of her sick older brother, her pregnant mother, and her out-of-work father.