Your Questions Answered

Sang Spell

Trapped in a world that time forgot, Josh is hitchhiking his way from Massachusetts to Dallas and a new life he didn’t ask for and doesn’t want, when he is beaten, robbed, and abandoned beside a remote mountain road. He awakes in a strange, primitive village called Canara, seemingly hidden from the modern world, with no cars or telephones or electricity.

But are the people of Canara Josh’s rescuers or his jailers? As he slowly heals from his injuries and the tragedy he has been running away from, Josh begins to realize that Canara is far stranger than just an isolated community passed over by time. How can hills and trees shift in place, and even buildings appear and then vanish? Why can’t he escape from Canara? And does he really want to?

Send No Blessings

Blessings, that’s what her mother called her children, all eight of them. To Beth, the oldest, fifteen and a sophomore in high school, eight seemed too many to be cooped up in the family’s double-wide trailer. Beth wanted something more, something different, for herself. She had never been anywhere but her small West Virginia town and she wanted to get away, especially when she learned that there was to be yet another “blessing.” Typing was the key, she thought. She was better at typing than even Stephanie King, who got good grades in all her classes.

How wonderful it would be to work in an office, enjoying a place that was your own! But there were other things Beth wanted, too, most of all love and recognition from her father, who seemed to do nothing but put her down. She craved love. And that was why, when Harless Prather came along, it seemed to be almost a miracle. He was older than she, out of high school, had a job, and was ready to marry. Marriage would take her out of the family trailer, but to what? Could she settle for a life that might turn out to be just like her mother’s: too many children, never quite enough money or space, never a chance to find out who she was and what she could do?

Beth had a choice to make, which did not get easier when a new semester proved far more difficult than she had expected. Should she take love when it was offered? Or was there something more? Beth’s family and its problems, her teachers, and Harless, too, all helped, but it was Beth alone who really set her course for the future.

The Year of the Gopher

George Richards, high-school senior, is angry about his parents’ attempts to run his life. George purposely spurns the Ivy League schools that his father wants for him. On a father/son visit to colleges in the Northeast from their home in Minneapolis, George blows his interviews, and when filling out the applications later, he supplies ridiculous answers which guarantee his rejection. Meanwhile George worries about the academic pressure on his brother in junior high school, fights with his slightly younger sister, and defends one of his best friends whose father is gay to his judgmental mother.

After a bitter fight with his father, George decides not to go to college at all but instead to work. First working in a garden shop and then as a bicycle courier, he learns some valuable lessons, becomes sexually involved with a girl in whom he isn’t really interested, makes peace with his father, and decides to go to college after all. Strong characters and believable action make this dilemma novel readable and thought-provoking. The ending stops short of patness and reaffirms the complexity and pain of coming of age.

The Dark of the Tunnel

Disturbed by a poorly-planned, approaching civil defense drill and by the circumstances of his mother’s death, a high school senior decides to take action.

A String of Chances

During the summer she spends with a married cousin, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a small town preacher not only discovers secrets which divide her family, but experiences, for the first time, uncertainties about her life.

Dark Side of the Moon

Short stories for teens that are dramatic, hard-hitting, engrossing. No easy answers here, but signs of understanding, caring and hope.

Ships in the Night

A collection of short stories about communication, as teens encounter the many-sided problems of the adult world. She writes about young people as they really are–candid, idealistic, sensitive, and often confused–and brings compassion and perspective to her treatment of the various crises along the way to growing up.

A Triangle Has Four Sides

A sparkling collection of short stories dealing with experiences of “real” young people facing the real challenges of growing up: a boy who faces the pain of his parents’ ruined marriage; a girl who worries about her relationship with her mom….

How to Find Your Wonderful Someone

For the young adult who seeks a meaningful relationship with someone special, the author offers sharp insights into the art of relating to others, beginning with a constructive approach to loneliness. You must first know who you are and what you expect from life. With honesty and sympathy she discusses the intimate problems of dating and falling in love, with an emphasis on tenderness, passion, emotional maturity, and handling of conflict.

Walking Through the Dark

The Depression causes Ruth’s dream of college and a teaching career to be no longer certain, but at the same time it enables her to grow as a person as she encounters others in difficult situations.