Joan W Blos

The journal of a 14-year-old girl, kept the last year she lived on the family farm, records daily events in her small New Hampshire town, her father's remarriage, and the death of her best friend. In the 1830s, a young teenager faces adjusting to a new stepmother. A fictional diary kept by 13-year-old Catherine Cabot, who is growing up in the town of Meredith, New Hampshire.

Henry's neighbors are scandalized that he ignores them and lets his property get run down, until they drive him away and find themselves missing him.

A young boy enjoys the lunch that his grandmother has carefully prepared.

A series of letters and newspaper articles reveals life in California in the 1850s, especially for thirteen-year-old Eldora, who was raised in Massachusetts as an orphan only to meet her influential mother in San Francisco, and Luke, who hopes to find a fortune in gold.