Seventeen-year-old Quinn has heard all her life about how untrustworthy men are, so when she discovers that her charismatic but selfish father, with whom she has recently begun to have a tentative relationship, has stolen from the many women in his life, she decides she must avenge this wrong.

After a young girl finds two old potatoes at her father's house, they plant and tend them to see if they will have new potatoes in September.

Eleven-year-old Jack's difficulties in dealing with his younger sister Annie, a child genius, worsen when Annie claims to have a new friend from the twenty-fifth century and Jack worries that this development will keep him from going to visit his father in America.

At the suggestion of her therapist, ten-year-old Fiona begins to keep a journal in which she records her fears, feelings, and gradual adjustment in the year after her parents get a divorce.

Frank Bascombe, having lost his career and his family, is selling real estate in Haddam, New Jersey, and is settling for a life of mere existence until the events of one Fourth of July weekend shock him into real contact with life.