Katy, the precocious ten-year-old daughter of the town doctor, befriends a retarded boy.

Promising to keep his mother's secret, eighteen-year-old Will moves into a house for people with disabilities, falls in love with a young Gypsy woman, and learns to assert his own identity and independence.

Midwesterner Mac Maciver tells the story of his life, from growing up while his parents cared for his father's first wife, who suffered mental disabilities after a bicycle accident, through his years as a husband with children of his own; and contemplates how the decisions people make influence the lives of others.

In the late seventeenth century, fifteen-year-old Kit, driven to desperation by the starvation of one brother and the mistreatment of his simple-minded twin, realizes his dream of becoming an apprentice in London but feels drawn by duty to return home to Essex.