Central Kansas Library System

Worn out from nursing soldiers at a Milwaukee hospital and struggling to recover from a traumatic love affair, Amanda Starkey returns to her family's rural Wisconsin farm to stay with her beloved sister, Mattie, and a young niece, Ruth. An Oprah Book Club selection and bestseller in hardcover, Drowning Ruth, now in paperback, is a stunning portrait of the ties that bind sisters together and the forces that tear them apart. Schwarz's first novel explores...

The first of three kindred novels set in the American Midwest of the 1920s from national bestselling author Dorothy Garlock's.
At 21, Julie Jones is convinced that life is passing her by. Her mother's death four years ago left her in charge of caring for her father and five siblings, and dashed her hopes of meeting that special someone who would whisk her away to the glamorous big city. Then all at once, Julie's predictable existence is...

"In rural Iowa, life is both the planter and uprooter of dreams. As love, long delayed, springs to life in the heart of a young Swedish immigrant, one man struggles with his withered ambitions--and new blessings that could take their place if he would but allow them room."--Page 4 of cover.

Willa Cather's Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative of the making of a young American soldier Claude Wheeler, the sensitive, aspiring protagonist of this beautifully modulated novel, resembles the youngest son of a peculiarly American fairy tale. His fortune is ready-made for him, but he refuses to settle for it. Alienated from his crass father and pious mother, all but rejected by a wife who reserves her ardor for missionary work, and dissatisfied with...

"When her grandfather's health begins to decline, Havyn is determined to keep her family together. But everyone has secrets - including John, the hired stranger who recently arrived on their farm. To help out Havyn starts singing at a local roadhouse - but dangerous eyes grow jealous as she and John grow closer. Will they realize the peril before it is too late?"--Publisher description.

A dog tries to find a way to cool off on a hot summer day on a farm.

Eleven-year-old Park makes some startling discoveries when he travels to his grandfather's farm in Virginia to learn about his father who died in the Vietnam War.

Life in Blessing, North Dakota, becomes difficult when courageous and gentle Grace Knutson is presented with an agonizing dilema.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Until that September of 1952, Luke Chandler had never kept a secret or told a single lie. But in the long, hot summer of his seventh year, two groups of migrant workers — and two very dangerous men — came through the Arkansas Delta to work the Chandler cotton farm. And suddenly mysteries are flooding Luke’s world.

A brutal murder leaves the town seething in gossip...

After years of turmoil, Virginia Lewis is finally satisfied with her life. God has blessed her with the love of her husband Jonathan and four wonderful children, one of which is the daughter of her wayward childhood friend Jenny. Ten-year-old Mindy has grown into a healthy, faith-filled child and a full-fledged member of the Lewis family. But when a desperate Jenny arrives to reclaim her daughter, Virginia and Jonathan find themselves in a battle...