Washoe County Library System

Seventeen-year-old Pattyn, the eldest daughter in a large Mormon family, is sent to her aunt's Nevada ranch for the summer, where she temporarily escapes her alcoholic, abusive father and finds love and acceptance, only to lose everything when she returns home.

Joey, who is still taking medication to keep him from getting too wired, goes to spend the summer with the hard-drinking father he has never known and tries to help the baseball team he coaches win the championship.

Seventeen-year-old Stetson meets the sister he never knew he had, and together they try to make sense of their pasts.

An eleven-year-old Penacook Indian boy living on a reservation faces his father's alcoholism, a controversy surrounding plans for a casino on a tribal island, and insensitivity toward Native Americans in his school and nearby town.

Forced to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, where she bonds with a much older man, seventeen-year-old Natalie, a recovering alcoholic, confronts issues in her family and life as she tries to turn her life around.

As she worries about her mother who is entering a rehab facility for alcoholism, eleven-year-old Veronica struggles with secrets, her favorite sport softball, and what she really wants to do with her life.

Sixteen-year-old loner Maggy Klass, who frequently seeks refuge from her alcoholic mother's apartment by sitting and drawing in a local cafe, becomes involved in a destructive relationship with a charismatic homeless youth named Cole.

Eleven-year-old Edgar and his mother move to Dawson, a town in Yukon, Canada, for a new start, but when Edgar fears his mother's destructive behavior will force them to leave, he turns to a dog named Benjamin to help him stop the worst from happening.

In 1969, the town of Red Clover, South Carolina, led by an enthusiastic new Latin teacher, supports thirteen-year-old Karlene as she wins her school spelling bee and strives to qualify for the National Bee, despite family problems and a growing desire for romance.

Seventeen-year-old Carson Speier is bored of Billings, Montana, and resentful that he has to help his mother take care of his father, a dying alcoholic whom he has not seen in fourteen years--but then he meets Aisha, a beautiful African American girl who has run away from her own difficult family, and together they embark on a journey of discovery that may help them both come to terms with their lives.