At seventeen, Jasmine is a widow in a small village in India where she was born. Just a few years later, she is Jane Ripplemeyer, happily pregnant by a middle-aged Iowa banker and adoptive mother of a Vietnamese refugee.
Relates how the author chose and trained her beloved Paso Fino horse, discovering that pleasure riding is more enjoyable for her than formal showing and competing with other horses.
Twelve-year-old Marie, living with her widowed mother, brothers, and younger sister on an Iowa farm during the Depression, tries to cope with the difficulties of growing up.
Excerpts from the diary of Sarah Gillispie, a pioneer in Iowa in the nineteenth century. Includes sidebars, activities, and a timeline related to the era.
While her father is looking for a homestead in the Dakotas, Addie and her mother and brothers spend the summer with her aunt and uncle in Sabula, Iowa, where she rescues her best friend during a flood and where her baby sister is born.
When sent to live on a farm in Iowa as an alternative to juvenile detention, seventeen-year-old Cosmos falls in love with a religious girl and reconsiders his values and beliefs.
The author draws upon her six years of teaching 8-12-year-olds of delayed reading proficiency in the University of Iowa summer reading program to outline a workshop format for instructing children with a wide range of reading abilities.
