When Kendall Archer, Mormon straight-arrow, ends up becoming friends with the popular school clown, he discovers that she is a more complex person than she pretends to be.

Alternating chapters follow three Mormons--Addie Sherman, Sam Choi, and Cate Giovanni--as they struggle to make the right choices and decisions regarding college, missions, and love.

A Mormon girl forced to leave Kirtland, Ohio, with her family to escape persecution finds a new friend in Far West, Missouri.

Having been cruelly abused by her mother until the age of sixteen, a young woman numbs the pain with drugs and loses herself until she finds God through the Mormon Church.

Fifteen-year-old Rachel uses poetry and her Mormon faith to cope with grief over the loss of her father, the horrors of her brother's alcoholism, resentment of her new stepfather, and the awkwardness of having an attractive schoolmate as her stepbrother.

In order to avoid juvenile detention, fifteen-year-old Katie McBride, the daughter of an abusive alcoholic, goes on a "handcart trek" that mimics that of the Mormon pioneers, and, in addition to finding and reading the journal of one of her ancestors, she also finds friendship, self-respect, and faith.

Orphans Kerra and Brock McConnell go to live with their Mormon aunt and uncle who live near a wondrous place in the woods where an ancient people called the Nephites cross paths with the residents of a small Utah town.