Johannes Verne is a young orphan raised in part by the Indians of the desert. He grows to be a rugged adventurer, a man bold enough to stake a claim in early-day Los Angeles.

In 1960s California, eighth-grader Abby Lovitt has trouble with True Blue, whose former owner was killed in a tragic accident, and Abby wonders whether the horse's skittish nature is because he is being haunted by the ghost of his former owner.

"Torn apart by war and bigotry, two families confront long-buried secrets in this haunting American novel of World War II and Vietnam. In the panoramic tradition of Charles Frazier's fiction, Phantoms is a fierce saga of American culpability. A Vietnam vet still reeling from war, John Frazier finds himself an unwitting witness to a confrontation, decades in the making, between two steely matriarchs: his aunt, Evelyn Wilson, and her former neighbor,...

When the Depression hits in Cairo, Illinois, and Oscar Ogilvie's father must sell their home and vast model train set-up to look for work in California, eleven-year-old Oscar is left with his dour aunt, where he befriends a mysterious drifter, witnesses a stunning bank robbery, and is suddenly catapulted onto a train that takes him to a different time and place.

Born of missionary parents in Hawaii, David has a variety of adventures that take him from a job on a whaling ship to the California gold mines.

In the summer of 1980 before she starts junior high school in Santa Rosa, California, Tracy, who was adopted from Vietnam when she was six years old, finds an old ammo box with a dog tag and picture that bring up painful memories for both her Vietnam-veteran father and her.