Lois' dream of going to college to study geology, an unusual field for a woman in Nebraska in the 1930s, is complicated by her parents' opposition and her involvement in the mental breakdown of her best friend's mother....
Eleven-year-old Amy Ryker, orphaned at two and raised by her grandfather, feels angry and abandoned, and when newcomer Violetta Mills, who has problems too, joins Amy's class, the two slowly become friends....