Central Kansas Library System

The "Voice of America's Heartland" delivers the second novel in her Depression-era trilogy that celebrates the fabled Route 66. Ernie Harding may have stolen Margie Kinnard's savings, but he doesn't shatter her dreams of going to California to become a movie star.

John Tilden's glory days are far behind him, and now it seems like all he has is the monotony of every day living. He certainly thought there'd be more to it than his ramshackle Oklahoma farm and a mundane job coaching basketball at his old high school. He questions his fatherhood skills too: his oldest son won't speak to him, his younger son wants to quit the basketball team, and now his daughter wants to go out on dates. He loves his wife, but the...

Your Grandpa is a felon and a Christian. He says he's a felon because he's a Christian. So says Aunt Sweet to her nephew Dustin, when her father, who has been raising Dustin, is arrested for hiding migrant workers. The law that makes harbouring 'illegals' an offence is the brainchild of the ferociously ambitious Oklahoma politician Monica Moorehouse. Aunt Sweet takes Dustin in, but Dustin is bullied by her son Carl Albert, and goes on the run, aided...

Through a hot, dry Oklahoma summer, twelve-year-old Franny tends wild animals brought by her neighbors, hears gossip during a weekly quilting bee, befriends a new neighbor who has some big secrets, and learns to hope.

The Amish of Wells Landing, Oklahoma, treasure their close-knit community, and the promise of their growing families. Everyone has long expected Sadie Kauffman and Chris Flaud to marry. But Sadie is struggling to choose a future that is true to both her heart and her faith.

Color illustration on front cover of a canyon scene with a man on horseback galloping away from a group of mounted Native Americans.

There's a three-thousand dollar bounty on James Bennett's head, and Marty Keller intends to collect it. Deep in the Oklahoma badlands, Keller pins down his quarry with warning shots, but a ricocheting bullet strikes Bennett in the back and mortally wounds him. Keller returns to Fort Wayne to collect his reward, only to be branded a back shooter by the townsfolk. Then, to his surprise, Bennett's widow pleads with him to escort her and her young son...

They busted out of McAlester State Penitentiary—three escaped convicts going to ground in a world unprepared for anything like them....
Lamar Pye is prince of the Dirty White Boys.  With a lion in his soul, he roars—for he is the meanest, deadliest animal on the loose....
Odell is Lamar's cousin, a hulking manchild with unfeeling eyes.  He lives for daddy Lamar.  Surely he will die for him....
Richard's survival...

"Jenna Burkhart is tired of being "special" and hearing about what she can't do. Even though she suffered a head injury in a childhood swimming accident, she wants a life of her own just like any Amish woman. But now that she, her mamm, and her mammi have moved to Wells Landing, she's having a hard time fitting in. . . . Until she meets Buddy Miller, a boy just like her, who gives her the confidence to reach for the impossible. Like Jenna, Buddy is...

From the author of The Kite Rider comes another great historical novel-this time set in the American west, where the residents of a new settlement struggle against nature and the railroad to keep their town alive. Pulse-pounding adventure, moments of gut-bustin' humor, and a deeply moving sense of community