Standing beside Elise’s grave, Siobhan Montrell remembers how her mother finally blew the perfect smoke ring on the day that Elise disappeared. Remembers the day that would change and define her life forever. The toddler's body was found in the river near Gables Guesthouse. Only eleven years old at the time, Siobhan has carried the guilt of Elise’s death with her since that day. Twenty-eight years later, Siobhan returns to Rachley Island, having inherited Gables -- guesthouse and family home -- from her aunt. Cleaning the property to prepare it for sale, she discovers an old book in which her aunt used to draw and write, revealing the truth about the tragic drowning. The River Child is a tale of grief and guilt, deceit and secrets, and ultimately forgiveness.

An informative memoir of kibbutz life that reveal a piece of Israel's early story that should not be forgotten.

Poor in material possessions, Skeeter's kinfolk are rich in their appreciation of their beautiful natural surroundings. The river on which they live—with its food supply, steamboats, and floods—figures strongly in their lives as the source of life, change, and death. Though their life is a simple one, it's filled with friendship, loyalty, love, and compassion

In 1963, the whirlpools of a changing culture inundate the Mississippi River region, where a young girl tries to comprehend and stay above the conflicting traditions that challenge her family's very survival.

Growing up on Grosse Ile is the story of life on a border island between Michigan and Canada, downriver from Detroit. What was it like to be young in a place surrounded by water and Great Lakes freighters in mid-twentieth century America? We grew up outside, and the island shaped our youth: both its unique provincial qualities-we all missed the same word on the fourth grade spelling bee-and its ties to the mainland-with the many "bridge stories" like the early bridge built to allow horses from the island to pull beer wagons in Detroit. With our ups and downs, we learned the lesson of the fragility of island life, and finally the hardest lesson of all-that those who grow up on the island must leave it.

"A demonstration of outstanding skills on the river of American literature." —Entertainment Weekly Bonnie Jo Campbell has created an unforgettable heroine in sixteen-year-old Margo Crane, a beauty whose unflinching gaze and uncanny ability with a rifle have not made her life any easier. After the violent death of her father, Margo takes to the river in search of her mother with only a biography of Annie Oakley to her name. Her river odyssey through rural Michigan becomes a defining journey, one that leads her beyond self-preservation and to deciding what price she is willing to pay for her choices.

Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe Award winner In this “taut, eloquent first novel” (Booklist, starred review), a young Black boy wrestles with conflicting notions of revolution and family loyalty as he becomes involved with the Black Panthers in 1968 Chicago. The Time: 1968 The Place: Chicago For thirteen-year-old Sam, it’s not easy being the son of known civil rights activist Roland Childs. Especially when his older (and best friend), Stick, begins to drift away from him for no apparent reason. And then it happens: Sam finds something that changes everything forever. Sam has always had faith in his father, but when he finds literature about the Black Panthers under Stick’s bed, he’s not sure who to believe: his father or his best friend. Suddenly, nothing feels certain anymore. Sam wants to believe that his father is right: You can effect change without using violence. But as time goes on, Sam grows weary of standing by and watching as his friends and family suffer at the hands of racism in their own community. Sam beings to explore the Panthers with Stick, but soon he’s involved in something far more serious—and more dangerous—than he could have ever predicted. Sam is faced with a difficult decision. Will he follow his father or his brother? His mind or his heart? The rock or the river?

Fifteen-year-old Jessie and the other rebellious teenage members of a wilderness survival school team abandon their adult leader, hijack his boats, and try to run the dangerous white water at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.