After her mother's death, Julie goes to live with her Aunt Cordelia, a spinster school teacher, where she experiences many emotions and changes, including love, jealousy, and tragedy, as she grows into a young woman.
When fourteen-year-old baseball player Hutch feels threatened by the arrival of a new teammate named Darryl, he tries to work through his insecurities about both Darryl and his remote and silent father, who was once a great ballplayer too.