As she turns twelve during the summer of 1953, Penny gains new insights into herself and her family while also learning a secret about her father's death.

It's 1949 in south Philadelphia. Diligent, hard-working, and proud, the Palazzinis have built a solid life for themselves and their three sons. Now that World War II is over, their sons, each one a decorated veteran, have returned home to the family cab company, to rejoin their world as it was before they left. But their future and fortunes are forever changed by a telegram, and the nephew who delivers it.

Pretending to have a much more glamorous family life, eleven-year-old Isabella worries that her new friends at a prestigious private school will discover that she is a "big fibbing, faking phony."

"After burning out in her corporate marketing career, Michelle Amato has built a thriving freelance business as a graphic designer. So what if her love life is nonexistent? She's perfectly fine being the black sheep of her marriage-obsessed Puerto Rican-Italian family. Besides, the only guy who ever made her want happily-ever-after disappeared thirteen years ago. Gabriel Aguilar left the Bronx at eighteen to escape his parents' demanding expectations,...

In 1903, ten-year-old Sofia and her family begin their life in America in Boston, where her father works in a grocery, her mother sells pasta, and she goes to school while trying to stay in touch with her old friend Maureen. Includes historical notes.

Peppe's father is upset when he learns that Peppe has taken a job lighting the gas street lamps in his New York City neighborhood.