Twelve-year-old Ruby Miller, movie buff and aspiring screen writer, tries to resolve the mysteries surrounding her little brother's stuffed woolly mammoth and their father's five year absence.

In St. Louis, Missouri, in 1911, orphaned eleven-year-old Julia Delaney rails against countless disappointments and the nun's strict rules at the House of Mercy, especially after her sister Mary turns fourteen and must leave, but she, her family, and best friend get tangled up with a gangster and a decade-old mystery.

Motherless, eleven-year-old Elvira, looks for a mother and finds instead the father she hardly knew she had.