Nine-year-old Josefina, the youngest of four sisters living in New Mexico in 1824, tries to help run the household after her mother dies.

In 1932 Kit finds that she has hard lessons to learn about the Depression, Both at home, where she is helping her mother run a boarding house while her father looks for a new job, and at school, where a fight spoils the preparations for the Thanksgiving pageant.

Nine-year-old Josefina wants to give up learning to play the piano until she sees the joy it brings to her baby nephew. Discusses the importance of music on the New Mexican frontier and describes how to dance La Vaquerita.

A ten-year-old girl discovers the modern delights of turn-of-the-century New York City when she travels there with her grandmother to visit relatives.

During a visit to her grandfather's plantation in Virginia during the summer of 1775, Felicity's loyalty is torn between her father and Ben, her father's apprentice who needs her help as he runs away to join George Washington's army of Patriots.

When her father's business closes because of the Great Depression forcing Kit to make changes in her life, the nine-year-old responds with resourcefulness.

In Williamsburg in 1774, nine-year-old Felicity rescues a beautiful horse who is being beaten and starved by her cruel owner.

Josefina hopes to become a "curandera" or healer like Tía Magdalena, and she is tested just before her tenth birthday when a friend receives a potentially fatal snakebite.

Molly's excitement at performing in a big show is exceeded only by the announcement that her father is returning home from the war.

When Tía Dolores, the beloved aunt who has cared for the Montoya family since the death of their mother, announces that she is planning to leave, Josefina and her sisters try to find a way to change her mind.