Danette Haworth

During the summer of 1988, Allie Jo, whose family runs an antebellum Florida hotel, meets Chase, who is staying there with his father, and they become friends when they discover a mysterious teenager hiding on the grounds of the hotel.

During the Vietnam War, when twelve-year-old Josh and his Air Force recruiter father move to a small town in the mountains of Pennsylvania and get a dog from the local shelter, Josh is forced to stop hanging back, and takes on the unfriendly town residents, a mountain, and the meanest boy in school.