Four teens have grown up together on both sides of Crabapple Creek, connected like the stones that cross the water.  Now World War I has come close to home and their worlds will never be the same.

• Muriel is outspoken about the war (she thinks it’s senseless) and women’s rights (why shouldn’t women discuss politices and vote in elections).  Her friends and family wish she would keep quiet and stay out of trouble.
• Her neighbor, Frank, enlists to fight in the war, but she is not quite ready to promise to be his girl even though she thinks she might be one day.  He doesn’t understand how Muriel can protest the war, but being on the front lines might change his mind.
• Her brother Ollie chafes at being left behind as his classmates leave to fight the war.  Not willing to wait until he is old enough, Ollie slips away in the night to join a war that will change his life forever.
• Emma, Frank’s little sister and Muriel’s best friend, just wants things to stay the same.  She doesn’t wish for anything more than for Ollie to come home so they can share a life together.

Helen Frost weaves the stories of these four teens together with beautiful poetry in Crossing Stones (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 2009).  It took me a little while to get into the story, but once I did, I was amazed at how the social cataclsyms–trench warfare, women’s suffrage, the Spanish flu epidemic–of the early 1900’s rocked the worlds of these families.