HC: 978-1-56145-349-8
Anna loves life on the Nebraska prairie where she lives with her parents and four-year-old brother in a simple sod house. She doesn’t mind helping out with chores on her family’s farm, especially when she is herding sheep with her pony. When a fierce blizzard suddenly kicks up on a mild winter day, Anna, her schoolmates, and their teacher become trapped in the one-room schoolhouse. The kerosene is gone and the wood for the stove is low. Then the wind tears away the roof and door. Anna knows they must escape before it is too late. Does she have the courage and strength to lead the others through the whiteout to safety?
“Anna is a strong, appealing heroine, and the story is suspenseful…”
—SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL
HC: 978-1-56145-524-9
Emma and her mama have boarded the Sally May for a steamboat journey that will take them to St. Joseph, where Papa will be waiting. When concern over her pony lures Emma below to the main deck—a place that she has been forbidden to go—she is shocked by what she encounters. Here is a world completely different from the pampered one above with its comfortable stateroom and fine food. Livestock and poor immigrants huddle together—underfed, unclean, and exhausted. Soon Emma is making regular trips below, ferrying food to Patrick, a young stowaway who recently emigrated from Ireland. When the boiler explodes and the steamboat starts sinking, Emma fights her way through the black smoke to find her friends and family. But is it too late?
“There’s never a dull moment...” —BOOKLIST
HC: 978-1-56145-398-6
PB: 978-1-56145-528-7
Gabriel is the son of a free black father and a slave mother, which makes him a slave as well. He loves to help his father care for the thoroughbred racehorses on Master Giles’s farm and hopes to become a famous jockey one day. But the violence of war disrupts the familiar routine of daily life on the farm. When Gabriel’s father enlists in a Colored Battalion to help the Union Army and earn enough money to purchase freedom for his wife and son, Gabriel is both proud and worried. But the absence of his father brings the arrival of a white horse trainer with harsh, cruel methods for handling horses...and people. Now it is up to Gabriel to protect the horses he loves.
“At the core of this stirring historical novel is the question of what freedom means… The boy’s first-person, present-tense narrative brings close the thrilling horse racing—on the plantation, at the race course, and in the war—and the African American history in all its complexity.” —BOOKLIST
HC: 978-1-56145-410-5
PB: 978-1-56145-547-8
Recently freed, Gabriel is making a name for himself as a jockey. When his former master asks him to ride a powerful but unpredictable horse, in a prestigious race, Gabriel jumps at the chance to compete against some of the greatest jockeys in the business. But as soon as he begins the journey to Saratoga, he finds that high-stakes horse racing can be a nasty business—and that being freed is not the same as being free.
HC: 978-1-56145-442-6
PB: 978-1-56145-530-0
Gabriel leaves behind his successful horse racing career to join his parents at Camp Nelson, where his father is a sergeant in the Fifth U.S. Colored Calvary of the Union Army. When the Calvary receives orders to join white regiments in an attack on the Virginia salt works, Gabriel surreptitiously gets ahold of a horse and a uniform and joins the troops. But being a soldier is a lot harder than he imagined. Bad, weather, rough riding, dwindling supplies, and blatant racism wear heavily on his spirit. When his father doesn’t return from battle, Gabriel must go in search of him.