Deeply wounded by her embittered mother's lack of sympathy for her aspirations, Elnora finds comfort in the nearby Limberlost Swamp, whose beauty and rich abundance provide her with the means to better her life.

Ramona at 7 1/2 sometimes feels discriminated against by being the youngest in the family.

"In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, gather to play mah jong, remember the past, and gossip into the night. United in unspeakable loss and new hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. . . . Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, memories that reveal these women's strength, worries, and determination, which their American-born daughters reject as irrelevant. The daughters, in turn, recall pivotal moments...

Jessie's father has always been a missing piece of her life-but if she were to find him, how would he feel about her? Jessie Wells thinks four is a good number. Things with four sides are sturdy and strong. A box, a chair, a room with four walls. But ever since the day Jessie's dad left, Jessie, her mother, and Aunt Zis have been a triangle-three-sided, though solidly linked.   Jessie has heard the story: Her beautiful young mother had married a...

Holly and her mother pick berries all summer in order to make enough money so that Holly can get a coat to wear to school in the winter.

Struggling to come to terms with a grave medical diagnosis, Heather Nelson is determined to fore go traditional medicine--to her father's chagrin--in hopes of finding answers and healing in Amish country. But first, she offers to drive her Amish friend, Grace Byler, to Ohio in order to find Grace's mother. Will mother and daughter, and one seriously ill graduate student, find the answers they long for? Or will "the telling" cause them all further...