After his anger erupts into violence, Cole, in order to avoid going to prison, agrees to participate in a sentencing alternative based on the native American Circle Justice, and he is sent to a remote Alaskan Island where an encounter with a huge Spirit Bear changes his life.

When sullen teenager Dylan Barstow is caught joyriding in a stolen car he is sent to his ex-Marine uncle for the summer, but soon they are on the way to Papua New Guinea in search of a World War II fighter plane and Dylan discovers that defiance is not a survival skill when you are lost in a jungle.

In 1922, Petey, who has cerebral palsy, is misdiagnosed as an idiot and institutionalized; sixty years later, after he is moved to a nursing home, he befriends a boy and shares with him the joy of life

Thirteen-year-old Ricky, the Mexican American son of a former Drug Enforcement Agency man, tries to avenge his mother's murder by crossing over into Mexico to steal a high-tech radar plane from drug smugglers.

When, protected by the branches of one of the trees she loves to climb, Gabriela witnesses the destruction of her Mayan village and the murder of nearly all its inhabitants, she vows never to climb again until, after she and her traumatised sister find safety in a Mexican refugee camp, she realizes that only by climbing and facing their fears can she and her sister hope to have a future.