Twelve-year-old Golden Maroni starts eighth grade determined to be master of his universe, but learns he cannot control everything on the soccer field, in his friendships, and especially in facing his father's incurable disease.
Lord Tennyson, a senior miniature Schnauzer employed as a distinguished nanny to a chaotic family of six children, has one summer to get his charges to learn to behave.
As ten-year-old Gwyn searches for a missing neighbor in her new town in Iowa, she learns much about her mother, who grew up there but has suffered from memory loss since Gwyn was four.