The Candle Star

When Emily was a little girl, her father had taken her outside in each season and pointed out the pictures in the stars, explaining the ancient lore behind them.  She wondered if he was looking up at the same stars right now. 

"They're beautiful, aren't they?"

Emily stared.  She hadn't heard Malachi approach.

"Looks like you can just reach up and pluck one down, maybe set it in a ring," he said.  "It'd be the most beautiful piece of jewelry you ever laid eyes on."

He pointed to the giant dipper.  "See the last two stars in the bowl of the spoon?  They line up just right and point the way to the North Star."

Emily had learned that when she was six.

"When I was little, I remember Mama setting a candle in the window on the nights Daddy would get in late.  I slept sound on those nights, confident that beacon was guiding my daddy  home."

He paused as he contemplated the night sky.  "The North Star is sort of like a candle that God hung up special to guide His lost children.  Lot of black folks looking up at it right now, directing themselves home to freedom."

Broken Ladders

Hannah Wallace would like nothing better than to escape the tedium and never-ending work of the family farm.  she feels lost among so many siblings and haunted by the memory of a brother that Pa wanted more than he wanted her.  She needs a chance to set herself appart, but nothing exciting ever happens in Wayland.

When war breaks out between the states, her father and brother leave to fight, but the army isn’t open to twelve-year-old girls. All the local dangers dried up years ago–soon after her parents unloaded their wagon on Michigan’s fast-filling frontier–leaving Hannah with nothing but pretend adventures. Before long, the pressures of running an unmanned farm wring even her imagination dry.

Then the farm is threatened. Hannah vows to save it to finally prove herself to Pa. Her determination catches her up in the adventure she’s always longed for and leads to some discoveries about herself that she never expected.

Beneath the Slashings

After four uncertain years of war, twelve-year-old Grace Nickerson is desperate to return to a sense of normalcy.  But when her father returns from the army, he sells the farm and drags the family off to a lumber camp in Michigan's northern wilderness. Grace is devastated; she's never been brave. When her tears and tantrums won't change Pa's mind, she stops speaking to him altogether.

Grace spends long hours working with her brother Sam and Ivan, the surly Russian cook, but at least in the kitchen she is safe from the lumberjacks. She's seen them from the window. They're rough, unkept, and terrifying. But slowly, with Sam's help, she comes to understand they're all missing home and recovering from loss, just like she is. Her fear begins to evaporate--until she learns one of them is trying to kill Pa.  

Who is sabotaging the camp, and why?  Will the winter in the woods bring the healing Grace needs?  Or will it drive a wedge into her family?