Gloria Whelan

After their mother dies of typhoid, Verna and her younger sister Carlie move with their father, a psychiatrist, and stern Aunt Maude to an asylum for the mentally ill in early-twentieth-century Michigan, where new ideas in the treatment of mental illness are being proposed, but old prejudices still hold sway.

In 1878, eleven-year-old Annabel and her parents survive a year of adventure which includes floating downriver in two shacks along with a group of Michigan lumbermen moving logs.

Ten years after the end of the Second World War, the town of Rolfen, West Germany, looks just as peaceful and beautiful as ever, until young Peter Liebig discovers a secret about his past that leads him to question everything, including the town's calm facade and his own sense of comfort and belonging.

"Kumar, a young boy living in present-day India, faces bigotry when he goes to visit a classmate from a higher caste family"--Provided by the publisher.

Set in the late 1950s, this is the moving story of a young boy whose father operates a ferryboat between Michigan's Upper and Lower peninsulas. As young Mark witnesses the building of the new Mackinac Bridge, he is torn between family loyalty and eager anticipation. He can't help being awestruck by the majesty of the five-mile-long bridge that will connect the two peninsulas and change the lives of so many. But the Mighty Mac will also put Mark's...

We are all going to be made perfect…In 1843, with all their possessions loaded onto a single wagon, ten-year-old Louisa May Alcott and her family bravely set out into the wilderness to make a new home for themselves on a farm called Fruitlands. Louisa's father has a dream of living a perfect, simple life. It won't be easy, but the family has vowed to uphold his high ideals. In her diary -- one she shares with her parents -- Louisa records her efforts...

At the dawn of the Young Turk Revolution, an English girl goes on the adventure of a lifetime. For years Julia has stared at her globe, dreaming of countries on the other side of the earth. In 1907, when her father is assigned to go on a diplomatic mission to the exotic Ottoman Empire, Julia begs him not to leave her alone in the house that has been empty since her mother died. Although Julia is only sixteen and young women rarely travel abroad, her...

Originally built in 1921 to race in the ocean, a sailboat named Bernida captures the attention and heart of a Michigan sailor. He buys the boat and brings her to the Bayview Yacht Club in Detroit. In 1925 the sailor enters Bernida in the very first Port Huron to Mackinac Island Race.

When Alexi learns from his babuskha that a Russian village church has been closed for sixty years, the resourceful young boy decides to prepare it for a Christmas miracle.

In 1840, Libby, living with her family on the Michigan frontier, finds herself inadvertently caught up in the forced evacuation of a group of Potawatomi Indians from their tribal lands.