Amy and her best friend Dee were kidnapped six years ago, but one day she returns home alone, unwilling to share anything about her experience, and she is desperate to protect her secrets no matter what. Nothing she does feels right when she tries to adjust back at home, she is a stranger in her own family. She feels guilty that she was the one to return. She soon realizes that keeping her secrets may just hurt the people she loves most. She has to go back so she can move forward, but she is risking everything.
One day, Ben’s parents soon after the police have come looking for them and rush him and his sister into the car. They say they are going on vacation, but his family never goes on vacation. Soon after, they lose the police in a car chase and they find themselves in a remote cabin in the woods. He soon discovers his parents’ secret, they took the millions of dollars accidentally deposited into their bank account and ran. He is not sure whether to think his parents are criminals, and is he one for running off with them?
LaToya goes to a mostly white school. She has no friends and even the other black kids make fun of her. One night she prays to be anything but black, and she wakes up with white skin, blond hair, and blue eyes. Then the real fun begins in this journey of self-discovery that takes shocking and hilarious twists and turns.
Life on Hayling Island seems isolated from the outside world for 14 year old Alix. Problems like terrorism, wars, and refugees seem worlds away. But one day at the beach, Alix and her friend find a drowning illegal immigrant who was tortured by the rebels in Iraq for helping the allied forces. Mohammed is desperate to not be deported and now his life falls in her hands. She must face this moral dilemma on her own, one mistake and they will be discovered.
In Ponyboy’s world, there are only 2 kinds of people: greasers and socs. A soc has money, power, and privilege, and can get away with practically anything. But a greaser always lives on the outside, and needs to watch his back if he doesn’t want to get beat up by a group of socs. Ponyboy is a greaser, and has always been proud of it, and fights against gangs of socs to help his fellow greasers.
Claire Goldsmith just wants a break. She has gone through struggle after struggle after struggle. So when her dad "falls over sideways" during a stroke, Claire just about loses it. Out of nowhere she is pushed down a road filled with tears, flying spaghetti and snappy brothers. Not to mention bullies and scary teachers at school. As Claire maneuvers her way down this twisted road she learns more about herself than thought possible.
Henry Page has never been in love, and he's fine with it. He's much happier focusing on college and the future, and becoming the newspaper editor at his school. When Grace Town walks into Henry Page's school one day, he practically overlooks her. Were it not for her rather oversized boy's clothes and the cane she walks with, he may have ignored her completely. But their paths cross in the form of the newspaper, and sparks fly, and Henry's about to learn for the first time just how stunning and disastrous love can be.
This consists of four stories--"quarters," Sedgwick calls them--from four different eras. Each is a compelling, haunting meditation on human nature. Each has horror undertones, confronts suffering and misery. Each is distinct in style, tone, setting, and action. Each involves philosophical musings about the meaning of spirals in the way of Jungian archetypes (universal, archaic patterns and images that derive from the collective unconscious and are the psychic counterpart of instinct; Wikipedia).
Told mostly in reverse order, But I Love Him chronicles the relationship between Anna and Connor. The reader is introduced to Anna, a high school senior, who has spent the past year focused on Connor, and has slowly given up the people and things that were important to her prior to meeting him.
