Bonita desperately wants her family to be normal, despite her younger sister Mary's mental illness, and often finds herself vacillating between loving her sister and hating her.
A rhyming alphabet that names people, places, and things from Louisiana's history, culture, and natural world and provides background information on each one.
In 1960, bored and lonely thirteen-year-old Sophie is not happy about spending the summer at her grandmother's old house in the Bayou until she finds a maze with a secretive and mischievous inhabitant. She then makes a wish and finds herself in 1860 at her family's home, where she is mistaken for a slave.
Lila, visiting the reputedly haunted Laurel Oaks Plantation in Louisiana, is contacted by the spirit of Daphne, a slave girl in the 1840s who has been waiting for more than a century for just the right person to help clear her name of charges that she poisoned two girls and their mother.
When eleven-year-old Don Schmidt wins a chicken-judging contest in his small town of Horse Island, Louisiana, and goes from outcast to instant celebrity, even his neglectful mother occasionally takes notice of him and eventually he discovers some shocking family secrets.
Sent by his guardian to live at a Louisiana school for retarded boys, Lizard, a bright, deformed youngster, escapes with the help of a visiting actor who gives him a role in his repertory company's production of "The Tempest.".
Lila, visiting the reputedly haunted Laurel Oaks Plantation in Louisiana, is contacted by the spirit of Daphne, a slave girl in the 1840s who has been waiting for more than a century for just the right person to help clear her name of charges that she poisoned two girls and their mother.
