Jane Elton is left orphaned by both of her parents who die due to unpredictable ailments.After this traumatic experience, Jane is taken in by herselfish and overbearing aunt Mrs. Wilson's. Faced with a repressive Calvinism practiced by her aunt, and the conservative and rural mentality of her new New England home, Jane longs to break free. She grows up to be a beautiful young woman who catches the eye of many gentlemen lurking around Mrs. Wilson's residence. Still struggling to identify with who she really, while constantly conflicting with her aunt, Jane chooses one of her wooers and marries him out of desperation, although her heart is with another man. Her struggles continue in form of a romantic triangle threatening to end fatally, with many other obstacles standing in the way of her happiness.

Based on a wealth of family papers, period images, and popular literature, this is the first book devoted to the broad history of sibling relations in America. Illuminating the evolution of the modern family system, Siblings shows how brothers and sisters have helped each other in the face of the dramatic political, economic, and cultural changes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As Hemphill demonstrates, siblings function across all races as humanity's shock-absorbers as well as valued kin and keepers of memory.

First published in 1824, Hobomok is the story of an upper-class white woman who marries an Indian chief, has a child, then leaves him--with the child--for another man.

Hope Leslie is a historical romance, set in 1643, in Massachusetts Bay Colony.William Fletcher is a young Englishman who is in love with his cousin Alice, but her father forbids their love and forces her to marry another man. In despair, Fletcher decides to leave England and move to the Massachusetts. In the Bay colony, Fletcher marries and has children, when he receives word that his loving Alice and her husband have both died. By Alice's will, her two daughters, Faith and Hope, will be coming to live with the Fletchers.To address the increase in household Fletcher brings two young Native Americans as servants. Hope Leslie becomes Fletcher's favorite since she reminds him on Alice, and one time, when the two of them were away, their household was attacked by the group of Native Americans who kidnapped some children and left bloodbath behind. From that point start Hope Leslie's journey through early New England, as she tries to find a place for herself, get an education and hopefully get reacquainted with her lost sister Faith.

Fanny Fern was one of the most popular American writers of the mid-nineteenth century, the first woman newspaper columnist in the United States, and the most highly paid newspaper writer of her day. This volume gathers together for the first time almost one hundred selections of her best work as a journalist. Writing on such taboo subjects as prostitution, venereal disease, divorce, and birth control, Fern stripped the façade of convention from some of society's most sacred institutions, targeting cant and hypocrisy, pretentiousness and pomp.