The idyllic lives of civic-minded environmentalists Patty and Walter Berglund come into question when their son moves in with aggressive Republican neighbors, green lawyer Walter takes a job in the coal industry, and go-getter Patty becomes increasingly unstable and enraged.

Since the death of his older brother, thirteen-year-old Billy Baggs has had a distant relationship with his father, but life on their farm in northern Minnesota begins to change when he starts to play baseball.

When the high school cheerleading team takes over a soda vending machine's funds, which were previously collected by the pep band, Gabe Johnson, an overweight "band geek" tired of being called names and looked down on, declares war.

Jed and Laura, two popular Minnesota high school students, find their seemingly perfect lives suddenly in chaos when they discover that each has a parent who is having an affair with the other.

In the late 1950s in the Midwest, a serial killer has been draining their victims of blood, leaving them otherwise undisturbed in their cars and homes. When a fifteen-year-old girl is found covered in blood amidst the latest corpses, she confides only in the sheriff's son but her story is unbelievable at best.

"Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer is close to 'aging out' out of the foster care system. A community service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping Molly out of juvie and worse.... As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly learns that she and Vivian aren't as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds...