F.A. Day Library: Historical Fiction

In 1849, twelve-year-old California Morning Whipple, who renames herself Lucy, is distraught when her mother moves the family from Massachusetts to a rough California mining town.

Schooled in the lessons of etiquette for young ladies of 1854, Miss Jane Peck finds little use for manners during her long sea voyage to the Pacific Northwest, where she lives among the American traders and Chinook Indians of Washington Territory.

In rural Indiana in 1904, fifteen-year-old Russell's dreams of quitting school are disrupted when his older sister takes over the teaching at his one-room schoolhouse after mean old Myrt Arbuckle "hauls off and dies."

In late nineteenth-century California, when Chinese immigrants are being driven out or even killed for fear they will take jobs from whites, fifteen-year-old Eliza Jane McCully defies the townspeople and her lighthouse-keeper father to help a Chinese boy who has been kind to her.

Growing up in Saitter, Louisiana, in the 1950s, twelve-year-old Tiger Ann struggles with her feelings about her stern, but loving grandmother, her mentally slow parents, and her good friend and neighbor, Jesse.

During the summer of 1971 in a small Texas town, thirteen-year-old Toby and his best friend Cal meet the star of a sideshow act, 600-pound Zachary, the fattest boy in the world.

Brody, a typical self-absorbed twelve-year-old in the summer of 1969, is awakened to the world around him when he accompanies his older brother to the Woodstock music festival.

Scott's dad is the only one in the neighborhood who builds a bomb shelter during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and when the time comes, more neighbors enter the shelter than Scott's dad is prepared for.

Fourteen-year-old Doug faces many challenges, including an abusive father, a brother traumatized by Vietnam, suspicious teachers, and isolation. But when he meets a girl known as Lil Spicer, he develops a close relationship with her and finds a safe place at the local library.

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.

In 1949, thirteen-year-old Francine goes to Catholic school where she becomes best friends with a girl who questions authority and is frequently punished by the nuns, causing Francine to question her own values.

In 1911, Turner Buckminster hates his new home of Phippsburg, Maine, but things improve when he meets Lizzie Bright Griffin, a girl from a poor, nearby island community founded by former slaves that the town fathers--and Turner's--want to change into a tourist spot.

A graphic novel version of events from the life of Georgia congressman John Lewis, focusing on his youth in rural Alabama, his meeting with Martin Luther King Jr., and the birth of the Nashville Student Movement.

When the Berlin Wall went up, Gerta, her mother, and her brother Fritz were trapped on the eastern side, while her father and her other brother Dominic were in the West. Four years later, Gerta sees her father on a viewing platform on the western side and realizes he wants her to risk her life trying to tunnel to freedom.

Joey the horse recalls his experiences growing up on an English farm, his struggle for survival as a cavalry horse during World War I, and his reunion with his beloved master.

In October, 1942, seventeen-year-old Helmuth Hübener, imprisoned for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets, recalls his past life and how he came to dedicate himself to bring the truth about Hitler and the war to the German people.

A young disabled girl and her brother are evacuated from London to the English countryside during World War II, where they find life to be much sweeter away from their abusive mother.

In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother, and brother are pulled from their Lithuanian home by Soviet guards and sent to Siberia, where her father is sentenced to death in a prison camp.

After being taken by German soldiers from a local movie theater along with other Italian boys including his Jewish friend, Roberto is forced to work in Germany, escapes into the Ukrainian winter, before desperately trying to make his way back home to Venice.

In 1943 sixteen-year-old Erik experiences the horrors of war when he is drafted into the German army and sent to fight on the Russian front.

In 1943, during the German occupation of Denmark, ten-year-old Annemarie learns how to be brave and courageous when she helps shelter her Jewish friend from the Nazis.

In 1943, a British fighter plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France and the survivor tells a tale of friendship, war, espionage, and great courage as she relates what she must to survive while keeping secret all that she can.

While in London as part of an all-boy acting company preparing to perform in a Shakespeare plan, Nat Field suddenly finds himself transported back to 1599 and performing under the tutelage of Shakespeare himself.

In the late eighteenth-century, Sido, the twelve-year-old daughter of a self-indulgent marquis, and Yann, a fourteen-year-old Gypsy orphan raised to perform in a magic show, face a common enemy at the start of the French Revolution.

Orphaned Nicoló is all alone in 1700s Venice, save for a magical clarinet that allows him to perform like an expert. Soon Nicolo is a famous virtuoso, but he cannot stop wondering if he earned the success--or if the girl he met in Venice is safe from the harm.

In the late 1100s, thirteen-year-old Will, the future Lord of Shackley, is exiled to Sherwood Forest, where he meets Robin Hood and the Merry Men and bands with them to try retake Shackley Castle.

A peasant girl and her holy greyhound, an oblate on a mission from his monastery, and a young Jewish boy travel across medieval France to escape persecution and save holy texts from being burned.

In England in 1356, as a monk records his every word, a young peasant tells of his journey with a young Chinese noblewoman to St. Alfric's Cove and the lair of a dragon.

Recounts the tragedy that strikes the Meeker family during the Revolution when one son joins the rebel forces while the rest of the family tries to stay neutral in a Tory town.

A young soldier in Vietnam bonds with his bomb-sniffing dog.

After being sold to a cruel couple in New York City, a slave named Isabel spies for the rebels during the Revolutionary War.

Eager to enlist, fifteen-year-old Charley has a change of heart after experiencing both the physical horrors and mental anguish of Civil War combat.

Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty in Vietnam.

Ten-year-old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father--the renowned bandleader, H.E. Calloway of Grand Rapids.

Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the Great Depression.

A twelve-year-old boy named Moose moves to Alcatraz Island in 1935 when guards' families were housed there, and has to contend with his extraordinary new environment in addition to life with his autistic sister.

In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.

Corydon, a young shepherd boy, is cast out of his village and captured by a monster who puts him on display with Medusa, the Minotaur, the Sphinx, and other classical beasts; but after Corydon helps them to escape, they join forces to fight for their survival and for their home.

Fourteen-year-old Princess Xenodice tries to prevent the death of her half-brother, the Minotaur, at the hands of the Athenian prince, Theseus, who is aided by Icarus, Daedalus, and her sister Ariadne.

When the Berlin Wall went up, Gerta, her mother, and her brother Fritz were trapped on the eastern side, while her father and her other brother Dominic were in the West. Four years later, Gerta sees her father on a viewing platform on the western side and realizes he wants her to risk her life trying to tunnel to freedom.

A group of psychic teenagers in 1960s Soviet Russia are forced to use their powers to spy for the KGB.

Working on a highly-classified espionage project, four English teenagers go back in time to the Cold War in 1962 to prevent a global outbreak of the bubonic plague in the twenty-first century.