Resolved to leave her home for good, young runaway Beverly is determined not to depend on anyone else, but as she settles in her new home and job, she forms connections with the people around her that alter her perspectives about life and herself.

The disturbing fate of a runaway older sister is gradually revealed in a tale told from the perspectives of the Hurst family, including a teen girl whose hallucinogen use has landed her in a mental ward, an autistic youth who is regressing into his own world, a workaholic and alcoholic father and an insidiously manipulative mother.

Native American guide Jane Whitefield returns from retirement to the world of the runner determined to hide a young pregnant girl who has been tracked across the country by a team of hired hunters.

A newly-widowed woman whose 14-year-old daughter has run away signs up for a single-parent parenting class, a group that soon becomes irrevocably enmeshed in her quest.

"Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is the story of Emily Shepard, a homeless teen living in an igloo made of ice and trash bags filled with frozen leaves. Half a year earlier, a nuclear plant in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom had experienced a cataclysmic meltdown, and both of Emily's parents were killed. Devastatingly, her father was in charge of the plant, and the meltdown may have been his fault. Was he drunk when it happened? Thousands of people are forced...

Anna Larson's daughter, Lauren, became pregnant while she was at college and decided to keep the baby, Sarah, but life had not been easy for them. When Sarah was only sixteen years old, she ran away from home. It is now Sarah's eighteenth birthday and neither Anna nor Lauren have heard from her in all this time. Anna is certain that her granddaughter is dead.