During the next few years he sees, and commits, more than his share of Civil War atrocities. Most of the action takes place in Kansas and Missouri between the rebel Irregulars (bushwhackers) and the Union Jayhawkers, with some civilians caught in the crossfire. The studiedly cool Jake experiences loss (the deaths of his best friend, father and comrades) and love (the best friend's "widow"); he also learns about tolerance from his contact with a nobly reserved black Irregular. There's plenty of hard riding, drinking and shooting, most of it leading to bloodshed. Jake's loyalty to the "secesh" cause is unquestioning and doesn't quite gibe with his growing unease amid the gore, or with his departure in the midst of the war for Texas with wife and child. The prose is occasionally rather pretentious, but this is a generally enjoyable coming-of-age novel by the author of Under the Bright Lights. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc

    In 1964, he was a seventeen-year-old Ohio high school kid. And he kept a diary.It's all here. The teenage girl who got away. The twenty-seven-year-old woman who didn't. The first beer. The first job. A series of bad haircuts. Friendship and betrayal, griping and groping, a daily account of one boy's struggle -- and all of our struggles -- to forge his way into adulthood with dignity intact, virginity a bad memory, and the day-to-day knowledge that it's not going to get any easier."A delightful book, and like the song Greene cruised to that summer, fun, fun, fun." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review"Everyone who was ever seventeen will love it!" -- Ann Landers

    Hilda's Papa settled his family in Minnesota on a small farm. Hilda loved her life on the Minnesota farm, but she had to learn to accept necessary change and to trust God in all things.

    In three of her best-loved novels, Jess, Gilly, and Sara Louise each learn they are not so different or so alone as they may think. In Bridge to Terabithia, Jess is tired of being "that crazy little kid that draws all the time." He practices the entire summer before school starts, hoping to become the fastest boy in the fifth grade and win the approval of his classmates - only to be beaten by a girl. That same girl teaches him the beauty of his own imagination as they rule over their own imaginary kingdom, and she shows him the depth of his own strength when a tragedy occurs. The Great Gilly Hopkins has been a foster child all her life. By the time she comes to live with Maime Trotter she is already known throughout the county foster system as a terror. There is no way Gilly's is going to accept the kindness of a woman too stupid to know what she is really like. She will just have to find a way to get to California, where her real mom is now living. In Jacob Have I Loved, Sara Louise should love her twin sister; everyone else loves beautiful, charming Caroline. For plain Sara hates her. Working her dad's fishing boat, she finds a sense of peace. However, something more is going to have to give inside her before she can love herself, her home, and her sister.

    A series of linked stories about a girl growing up in a small town.