We all need a little help sometimes. But help is hard to ask for-especially when you are a mom. Mother Mule loves her family. Daddy Mule, Brother Mule and Baby Mule rely on her for so much. She spends her days tending to their needs and carrying their belongings in her pack, making sure to always have everything they need on-hand. Mother Mule is tired, and her load is heavy. One day, while running errands, she happens upon a glimmering pool of water that contains all the magic she needs to help lighten her load. Mother Mule is a playful, mesmerizing story about a well-meaning mother who learns to ask for help? and all the good that comes to those we love when we open our hearts to a little magic.

“This small snapshot of the protest movement pays homage to both the determination of ordinary folk and the power of Dr. King’s words. . . . An intergenerational story filled with heart and soul.” — Kirkus Reviews When Alex spies a mule chomping on greens in a nearby garden, he can’t help but ask about it. “Ol’ Belle?” says Miz Pettway. “She can have all the collards she wants. She’s earned it.” And so begins the tale of an ordinary mule in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, that played a singular part in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. When African-Americans in a poor community — inspired by a visit from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — defied local authorities who were trying to stop them from registering to vote, many got around a long, imposed detour on mule-drawn wagons. As Alex looks into the eyes of gentle Belle, he begins to understand a significant time in history in a very personal way.

A novel about the recession generation and a young couple who turn to drug trafficking to make it through.

"Lydia Peelle has given us a collection of stories so artfully constructed and deeply imagined they read like classics. It marks the beginning of what will surely be a long and beautiful career." —Ann Patchett In Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing, Lydia Peelle brings together eight brilliant stories—two of which won Pushcart Prizes and one of which won an O. Henry Prize—that peer straight into the human heart. In startling and original prose, she examines lives derailed by the loss of a vital connection to the land and to the natural world of which they are a part. Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing conveys an almost Faulknerian ache for the pre-modern South, for a landscape and a way of life lost to the ravages of money and technology.

In 1936, Jo Barkley and her family move from Utah to southern Idaho. Egbert tells her she'll never be accepted at Rock School if she doesn't get on the good side of Kate. Jo doesn't think Kate has a good side. How can anyone make friends with a girl as spiteful as Kate? Jo has to have a horse to ride. The only possibility is one of Dad's work mules, but Pete has been abused by a former owner. The first time Jo gets on, Pete bucks her off. Jo and her family struggle to get through the winter. Things go from bad to worse when a telegram comes from Utah saying Grandpa has died and Dad has to go help Grandma. While he's gone, Jo and Clyde go to the desert for a load of sagebrush. Jo has a runaway with the mules and Clyde breaks his leg. With a winter storm coming, will Jo be able to save her brother? Driving the mules home in a blizzard, Jo has a life-changing experience, but the supreme test comes later when a rattlesnake spooks Kate's horse. Jo has to decide whether to save her own neck or rescue Kate.

Sherman and Grace Coolidge were a remarkable couple in many respects. Sherman Coolidge (Runs On Top), born in the early 1860s into the Northern band of Arapahos, experienced the extreme violence of the Indian Wars, including the death of his father, as a young boy. Grace Wetherbee Coolidge was born into wealth and privilege in 1873, only to reject her life as a New York heiress and become a missionary on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. It was there that Sherman and Grace met and later married in 1902. After eight years together at Wind River, both went on to achieve prominence: Sherman as the president of the Native-run reform group the Society of American Indians (1911–1923), Grace as the author of Teepee Neighbors, a book describing her time on the reservation that drew praise from critics such as H. L. Mencken. Sherman was an Episcopal priest and a mesmerizing speaker who had the unique ability to blend his assimilated Western perspective with Arapaho values to educate the American public about the significant challenges facing Native peoples, including endemic poverty, racism, and inequality. Offering unprecedented entrée into the most significant writings and documents of a leading Native American advocate and his wife, this volume is an intimate portrait of their life and contributes to our understanding of American Indian activism at a key moment of Indigenous resurgence against the settler state.