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United States History - Fiction Books

*** not in IMC collection

The 19th Century

Uncommon Faith (F Krisher) - In 1837-38, residents of Millbrook, Massachusetts, speak in their different voices of major issues of their day, including women's rights, slavery, religious differences, and one fiery girl named Faith

Three Rivers Rising: A Novel of the Johnstown Flood A tragic event in U.S. history - the 1889 flood in Johnstown, Pennsylvania - is the backdrop for this cross-class romance.

The Unresolved (F Welsh) - In 1904 New York City, the spirit of a deceased German American teenage girl searches for the person responsible for the Slocum steamboat fire that claimed her life and the lives of more than 1000 other passengers.

The Luxe (F Godbersen) - In 1899 Manhattan, the drowning of beautiful Elizabeth Holland, daughter of New York society's ruling family, brings to the surface the scandalous behavior of several teenagers of varying social class

The West

Shane (F Schaefer) - A stranger rides into a small Western town in 1889 and creates a lasting impact on its inhabitants, especially on young Bob Starrett and his family.

Telegraphy Days: a Novel (F McMurtry) - Meet the big gunfighters of the Wild West (Billie the Kid, the Earp Brothers, and Doc Holliday) through the eyes of a woman who could be called a pistol herself, Nellie Courtright.

Half Broken Horses (Walls) - Lily Casey Smith grows up breaking horses with her father and leaves home at fifteen to ride five hundred miles in order to teach in a frontier town before encountering various difficulties, marrying a rancher, and speaking out against prejudice in various parts of the U.S.

Lonesome Dove (F McMurtry) -A novel about the last defiant wilderness of America. Journey to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove and meet an unforgettable assortment of heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove is a book to make us laugh, weep, dream, and remember.

Holy Road (F Blake) - Eleven years have passed since Lieutenant John Dunbar became the Comanche warrior Dances With Wolves and married Stands With A Fist, a white-born woman raised as a Comanche from early childhood. With their three children, they live peacefully in the village of Ten Bears. But there is unease in the air, caused by increased reports of violent confrontations with white soldiers, who want to drive the Comanches onto reservations–a movement symbolized by the railroad, the white man’s holy road. Disquiet turns to horror, and then to rage, when a band of white rangers descends on Ten Bears’ village, slaughtering half its inhabitants and abducting Stands With A Fist and her infant daughter. The three surviving great warriors–Wind In His Hair, Kicking Bird, and Dances With Wolves –decide they must go to war with the white inva-ders. At the same time, Dances With Wolves realizes that only he can move unnoticed among the white men to rescue his wife and child

The Way to Bright Star (F Brown) - During the Civil War, a young man battles Indians, bandits and deserters as he escorts two camels across Kansas and Missouri

The Best of the Breed (F L’Amour) –

Mckettrick’s Choice (F Miller) - Holt, the eldest McKettrick son, returns to his family home in Texas to make peace with his past and save the man who raised him, but his involvement with Lorelei Fellows complicates Holt's efforts to keep his trip short and remain unattached to his family home.

O’Pioneers (Cather) - Alexandra, daughter of a Swedish immigrant farmer in Nebraska, inherits the family farm and finds love with an old friend.

The Last Frontier (F Fast) - Tells the story of the Cheyenne Indians in the 1870's, and their strugle to flee from the Indian Territory in Oklahoma back to their home in Wyoming and Montana.

20th Century

Ragtime (E. L. Doctorow) –

***The Miner’s Daughter by Gretchen Laskas - Sixteen-year-old Willa, living in a Depression-era West Virginia mining town, works hard to help her family. She experiences love and friendship, and finds an outlet for her writing when her family becomes part of the Arthurdale, West Virginia, community supported by Eleanor Roosevelt.

****The Rock and the River by Kekla Magoon - In 1968 Chicago, fourteen-year-old Sam Childs is caught in a conflict between his father's nonviolent approach to seeking civil rights for African Americans and his older brother, who has joined the Black Panther Party.

Uprising by Margaret Haddix (F Haddix) - In 1927, at the urging of twenty-one-year-old Harriet, Mrs. Livingston reluctantly recalls her experiences at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, including miserable working conditions that led to a strike, then the fire that took the lives of her two best friends, when Harriet, the boss's daughter, was only five years old. Includes historical notes.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (f Taylor) - An African-American family living in Mississippi during the Depression of the 1930s is faced with prejudice and discrimination which its children do not understand.

Sources of Lights (F McMullen) - Sam, having moved with her mother to Jackson, Mississippi, after the death of her father, finds the conservative 1960s values of the town clashing with her family's liberal views and struggles to navigate difficult relationships and understand segregation.

Starplace (F Grove) - Thirteen-year-old Frannie learns hard lessons about prejudice and segregation on when she becomes friends with a young black girl who moves into her small Oklahoma town in 1961

Shorty Spooner (F Blue) - Four different points of view about thecivil rights movement in 1950s Alabama are expressed by people involved in the country's painful process of overcoming stereotypes and racial division.

***Shackleton’s Stowaway by Victorial McKernan A fictionalized account of the adventures of eighteen-year-old Perce Blackborow, who stowed away for the 1914 Shackleton Antarctic expedition and, after their ship Endurance was crushed by ice, endured many hardships, including the loss of the toes of his left foot to frostbite, during the nearly two-year return journey across sea and ice.

Giant (Ferber) – The story of Leslie Benedict, a New England woman who meets and marries a Texas rancher whose life is consumed by a rivalry with Jett Rink, a former employee who made good.

Homeland (F Jakes) - Story of a German American family in Chicago, Ill. struggling to live the American dream.

The Given Day (F Lehane) - During the bloody police riots of the early twentieth century, a Boston police officer from a wealthy family, Danny Coughlin, joins a union movement to track down violent radicals, but his values are challenged when he learns that Luther Laurence, the African-American houseman who works for the Coughlin family, is connected with the NAACP.

Flygirl (F Smith) - During World War II, a light-skinned African American girl "passes" for white in order to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots.

Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller (F Miller ) - At age twenty-one, partially-blind, lonely but spirited Annie Sullivan travels from Massachusetts to Alabama to try and teach six-year-old Helen Keller, deaf and blind since age two, self-discipline and communication skills. Includes historical notes and timeline.

Spite Fences (Krisher) - Thirteen-year-old Maggie Pugh lives in Kinship, Georgia. It is a town where if you're poor, you live on the west side of town and if you're rich,you live on the north end. If you're white, you use one bathroom at Byer's Drugs and if you're black, you use another. All that starts to changein the summer of 1960.

Stormy Weather (F Jiles) - After their father's death, the three Stoddard girls travel with their mother back to the family farm where they struggle to survive during the Dust Bowl and put all of their faith in the success of a wildcat oil well.

The Fire-eaters (F Almond) - Despite observing his father's illness and the suffering of the fire-eating Mr. McNulty, as well as enduring abuse at school and the stress of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bobby Burns and his family and friends, living in England in 1962, still find reasons to rejoice in their lives and to have hope for the future.

Monkey Town: the Story of the Scopes Trials (F Kidd) - When her father hatches a plan to bring publicity to their small Tennessee town by arresting a local high school teacher for teaching about evolution, the resulting 1925 Scopes trial prompts fifteen-year-old Frances to rethink many of her beliefs about religion and truth, as well as her relationship with her father

The Spirit Catchers (F Kudlinski) - During the Great Depression, fifteen-year-old Parker finds himself homeless and traveling across New Mexico's desert, when a shepherd leads him to the artist Georgia O'Keeffe who teaches him photography and gives him a new perspective on life.

The Lightning Keeper (F Lawrence) - Arriving in New York in 1914, inventor Toma Pekocevic designs a powerful water turbine that leads to a career within General Electric and a love affair with Harriet Bigelow, the daughter of a New England dynasty that has fallen on hard times.

***Hesse, Karen. A Time of Angels. - Sick with influenza during the 1918 epidemic and separated from her two sisters, a young Jewish girl living in Boston relies on the help of an old German man, and her visions of angels, to get better and to reunite herself with her family.

Shanghai Girls (F See) - Sisters Pearl and May Chin are forced into marriages to Chinese men living in America after their father gambles away his wealth; but life in America proves more difficult than they expected

Prayers for Sale (F Dallas) - In 1936 Middle Swan, Colorado, eighty-six-year-old Hennie Comfort befriends seventeen-year-old Nit Spindle, who recently lost a daughter and whose husband works on a dredge boat, by inviting her into her knitting circle and passing down stories about the small town.

Scottsboro (F Feldman) - Alice Whittier, a crusading young journalist in 1931, leaves New York and travels to Scottsboro, Alabama, to cover the trial of nine African-American boys who have been accused of raping two white prostitutes who happened to be riding on the same freight train as the boys.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (F Ford) - Henry Lee, a Chinese-American in Seattle, loses his wife to cancer and recalls his youth, when he and his Japanese-American friend, Keiko, spent time together during WWII--before Keiko and her family were interred at a camp--and deals with generational difficulties between himself and his father and college-age son.

Refugees (F Stine) - Dawn, a California teen who has run away to New York, tries to contact her foster mother Louise, a Red Cross doctor in Pakistan, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and instead reaches Louise's assistant, Johar, a refugee from Afghanistan, and the two form a bond that gives them both hope and courage to face the future.

The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (F Alexie) - Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Native American is the school mascot.

Falling Many (F Delillo) - Keith Neudecker, a survivor of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, returns home from the ruins to his wife Lianne, from whom he had separated, and his young son Justin, and finds in the aftermath that he has become a very different man.

Who Will Tell My Brother (F Carvell) - During his lonely crusade to remove offensive mascots from his high school, a Native American teenager learns more about his heritage, his ancestors, and his place in the world.

The Quiet American (F Greene) - In 1950s Indochina, an English correspondent observes a well-intentioned but misguided young American military advisor covertly setting up a "Third Force" to replace the French-backed emperor, and then takes actions to stop him when they become embroiled in a love triangle.

Crossing Stones (Frost) - Four young people in two families tell of their experience during World War I when the boys enlist and are sent to fight, Emma finishes school, and Muriel joins the suffrage movement

The Glory Field (F Myers) - This captivating saga of one black family takes readers on a journey from slavery to modern times. The book features teenagers from five generations, each undergoing a crisis that leads them to maturity. The collection of stories is compelling. Together they present a dynamic portrait of the progress of black people in the United States. A riveting, important book for all Americans.

Love Medicine (F Erdrich) - Presents the story of the Kashpaws and the Lamartines, two extended families who live on and around a Chippewa reservation in North Dakota and of Lipsha Morrissey, a young man who attempts to bring his wandering grandfather back to his long-suffering grandmother with a love medicine made from goosehearts.

The Help (F Stockett) - Skeeter returns home to Mississippi from college in 1962 and begins to write stories about the African-American women that are found working in white households, which includes Aibileen, who grieves for the loss of her son while caring for her seventeenth white child, and Minny, Aibileen's sassy friend, the hired cook for a secretive woman who is new to town.

Shorty Spooner (F Blue) - Four different points of view about the civil rights movement in 1950s Alabama are expressed by people involved in the country's painful process of overcoming stereotypes and racial division.

Weedflower (F Kadohata) - After twelve-year-old Sumiko and her Japanese-American family are relocated from their flower farm in southern California to an internment camp on a Mojave Indian reservation in Arizona, she helps her family and neighbors, becomes friends with a local Indian boy, and tries to hold on to her dream of owning a flower shop.

After This (F McDermott) - John and Mary Keane and their four children, Michael, Annie, Jacob, and Clare, battle the tumultuous political, social, and spiritual upheavals of the 1950s and 1960s.

Spite Fences (F Krisher) - Thirteen-year-old Maggie Pugh lives in Kinship, Georgia. It is a town where if you're poor, you live on the west side of town and if you're rich,you live on the north end. If you're white, you use one bathroom at Byer's Drugs and if you're black, you use another. All that starts to changein the summer of 1960.

The Manchurian Candidate (F Condon) - Buried deep within the consciousness of Sergeant Raymond Shaw is the mechanism of an assassin-a time bomb ticking toward explosion, controlled by the delicate skill of its Communist masters

Fiction Books About US Wars

Civil War

The Price of a Child (F Carey) - While traveling with her master, Ginnie, a slave from Virginia, daringly walks away from slavery into freedom with two of her children. She begins a new life in Philadelphia as Mercer Gray, and there she becomes a fierce abolitionist, determined to rescue the baby son she had to leave behind

The Last Full Measure (F Shaara) - A dramatization of the confrontations between Robert E. Lee, Lawrence Chamberlain, and Ulysses S. Grant during the last two years of the Civil War.

The Killer Angels (F M. Shaara) - A fictional account of four days in July, 1863 at the Battle of Gettysburg discussing tactics, plans, and preparations for battle from both the Northern and Southern points of view.

Red Moon at Sharpsburg (F Wells) - Even though the odds are against her and the Civil War has ruined her home and given her a view of the darker side of humanity, thirteen-year-old India Moody continues to aspire to become a scientist and attend Oberlin College.

Riot by Walter Dean Myers - In 1863, Irish immigrants, enraged by the Civil War and a federal draft, lash out against blacks and wealthy swells of New York City.
164 p. 2009

World War I

Skies Over Sweetwater (F Moberg) - In 1944, eighteen-year-old Bernadette Thompson leaves her Iowa home and attends training camp for the Women Airforce Service Pilots in Sweetwater Texas, where she hones her flying skills and befriends women of different backgrounds.

Crossing Stones by Helen Frost - Four young people in two families tell of their experience during World War I when the boys enlist and are sent to fight, Emma finishes school, and Muriel joins the suffrage movement.

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson - Chronicles the last and fatal voyage of the Lusitania, moving between events on the luxury ocean liner as it returned to its home port of Liverpool from New York City to those on the German submarine U-20.