Inside, there has always been a sort of fiery flame that brought ecstasy yet sometimes agony. The ecstasy being that I was aware of my own gifts, and that soon the world would know the special things that I had and wanted to share. However, the agony was that the more time passed the more worried I had become for I felt time was running out. Time has always been against me in my eyes and this is why it's vital that I complete my book. Completion of this project lets me know that I'm using what God has given me to make an impact, that my mission has not been ignored. God is the source in which I pull all creativity from, He is with me through everything and I love Him very much. Not only because He's giving me blessings, but because He understands my weaknesses and because of that He has mercy on me. God is the true leader of my life, and He teaches me to be kind and gentle to any situation whether good or bad.

"Yesteryear's Child" brings to life a time and place in our collective American past. This is much more than one woman's story. Outdoor privies became indoor plumbing; horse-drawn carriages shared the dusty roads with the first automobiles; and the earliest telephone numbers were single digits. In the tradition of such personal memoirs as "Cheaper by the Dozen" and "I Remember Mama" this delightful tale will evoke memories in the old and wonder in the young.

In the first decade of the 20th century, nearly 10 million immigrants journeyed to America in search of a better life. Thousands settled in Homestead, Pennsylvania, a city where the skies were always black, the steel mills were always roaring, and life was bleak and harsh. One of them, Ewa Piekos, an orphan girl of 15 from Poland, wants simply to be loved and to feel like she is not alone.On the voyage to America, Ewa's beloved sister dies, throwing her into an emotional tailspin. It's only after arriving at Ellis Island that Ewa learns the real reason she was brought to the Land of Golden Opportunity. This secret is almost as crushing to her as the moment her sister died.From the time she arrives at Ellis Island, Ewa's life is never an easy one. It is filled with heartache and loss. But her life in America enables her to plant roots which eventually grow with the family she establishes there.

Cléante Desgraves Valcin (1891-1956) was a poet, writer, and feminist—most prominently Haiti’s first published female novelist, who employed her sentimental fiction to explore matters of race, gender, nationalism, and sovereignty. A contemporary of Harlem Renaissance writers such as Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston, Valcin emerged as an influential writer and political figure among the Black Atlantic diaspora. Now, for the first time, her two acclaimed novels are available in English translation. Cruel Destiny (1929) tells the tragic love story of Armand and Adeline, drawn together by a magnetic attraction, yet kept apart by a dark family secret. Depicting the heavy expectations placed upon women in Haiti’s elite society, it also explores the troubled and twisted relationships between the Haitians and their former colonial masters, the French. In The White Negress (1934), a Frenchwoman moves to Haiti and is torn between two very different men, a Black Haitian lawyer, and a white American carpetbagger. Putting a fresh spin on the tired tragic mulatta trope, Valcin reveals the racial prejudices, class tensions, and anti-colonial resentments of an island under American occupation. Together, these two novels expand our understanding of Caribbean literature, as well as the political struggles and artistic triumphs of Black women in the Americas.

An irresistible tale of love and passion in the post-Civil-War South from Dorothy Garlock, the award-winning, bestselling author of A Gentle Giving and Sins of Summer. Addie waited four long years for her husband to return from the Civil War, but to no avail. Now deserters and drifters are making her life dangerous . . . until a mysterious stranger shows up to protect her and her children.

The small village in Pomerania in northern Germany provided a peaceful haven for the childhood years of author Ingeborg E. Ryals. But in 1939 the beginning of World War II irrevocably changed her idyllic life. In this memoir Ryals shares her first hand experiences as the war began to affect every aspect of her life. At the age of fifteen, she had to dig trenches behind the front lines and spent many days hiding in fear of the Soviet Army as it invaded and pillaged her village. Diphtheria and typhoid epidemics swept the country. She survived a bout of diphtheria but lingered near death for days on end with typhoid fever. There was little food to sustain them. At the age of eighteen, she was shipped to a labor camp operated by the Russian military on an island in the Baltic Sea. Ryals also recounts her escape and her eventual marriage to an American. With photos included, The Tears of War narrates a very real story of the tragedy of war. It shows Ryals perseverance and her ability to overcome obstacles in an effort to survive.

East New York was a section of Brooklyn and was the mecca of organized crime; the floodgates were opened to immigrants and those that came for a better life, marveled at the vastness of the open fields they the immigrants were ready to enslave themselves to secure a better life. Others with devious minds saw an opportunity to form a new government. America was ripe for the underworld. The families came for freedom but were subdued; some families taught their children to respect the crime lords. I was fascinated by the stories of brutality by men that blamed others for discrimination; the crime lords declared that we must stick together and not trust outsiders. That formed my mind set. The schools were a playground for me; I fought my way from one school to another. I was uneducated found myself with the worst jobs. I started stealing. I developed a taste for forbidden fruit. I spent time in the military learned to use weapons. I had a diabolical aspect in my thinking nothing seemed to bother me. I did mundane things one fiasco after another, all I could think of was crime. I love to handle guns it give me a sense of power. I would practice in front of the mirror: I would pull the gun from my belt. I wanted to be John Dillinger tough and vicious. I did a lot of time lost my wife and child noting mattered all I wanted was to be respected by fear; the jails were hard to take. The inmates were hard to deal with. My eyes opened to the fact that I was the biggest sucker that there ever was. I did not feel sorry for myself I kind of disliked who I was. I lived alone had few friends. I spent the last 17 years poking fun at myself I could have been someone; I elected to be a nobody!