Patricia Beatty (1922–1991)

When Truth Hopkins's father dies, she goes to live with her uncle and his family on their North Carolina farm. Like Truth, the Bardwells are Quakers. They oppose slavery but refuse to take up arms in the civil war that is now being waged to end this inhuman institution. Then one day, a runaway slave takes refuge on the Bardwell farm and, to Truth's amazement, her uncle hides him from the slave catchers. Even more puzzling, he asks her to accompany him when he delivers a wagonload of hay to a show more neighbor late: that night.
This ride, and the wagon's real cargo, involve Truth in a mysterious and dangerous underground movement -- and reveal how she can help further the cause of freedom without the use of a rifle. show less

This is a childhood favorite of mine, one I first read as a library book and was later able to find in paperback. I think it's been at least 20 years since I last read it, but I picked it up again for research reasons. The book continues to be a delight.

The book addresses a little known bit of history--women librarians, roaming the American wilderness to get books to the people. Eight Mules is set in 1916 in the vicinity of Monterey, California. Fayette's widowed mother, a new graduate from show more the librarian school, gets a job (due to some meddling on Fayette's part) to take books by mule to "desperate ladies" in an isolated coastal mountain town. Fayette and her little brother go along for a wild ride plagued by an endless string of disasters that she attributes to a particular collection of Poe. show less

When Katherine Scott, a widow, decides to leave Portland with her two children for the gold fields of the Idaho Territory, she thinks she'll make a fine living teaching school. "Miners do have children, don't they?" she says to her skeptical daughter, thirteen-year-old Ann Katie. If the miners pouring into Idaho to make their fortunes have kids, they sure haven't brought them along. And as for the comforts of the city... there's nowhere in Eagle City, Idaho, to live but a tent, and there's show more nothing to eat but beans. And beans. And more beans.

With the help of an irrepressible lady from Sweden named Helga Storkersen, the Scotts open a restaurant. Soon they are as much a part of the boom-town atmosphere that characterized Idaho during the 1880s as any miner, scoundrel, thief, or profiteer. And they love it. show less

It took me a while to readjust to the simplicity of children's literature, and I am still not sure exactly how I feel about how oversimplified things could be at times. At the beginning, especially, the dialogue seemed stilted, and not just because of the typical Quaker "thee's" and "thy's." There is not a particularly large cast of characters, with the result that the Southern characters, with the exception of Truth's schoolteacher, are either Quakers or rather stereotypically-drawn, show more die-hard Confederates (and all men, at that). Also, the fact that this ~175 page book covers all years of the Civil War means that there are major time gaps, sometimes at points where I wished daily life and other events could have been more fleshed out.

But otherwise, this is a sweet story about a young girl finding courage and her own voice during a pretty bad time in American history. I particularly appreciated the novel's emphasis on Quaker experiences during the war as well as its portrayal of North Carolina's Battle of Bentonville, both of which are uncommon in the other Civil War fiction I've run across. And while slavery and the Underground Railroad are common themes in children's historical fiction, I think it's rare for a novel to include abolitionists also traveling along the Railroad. There are still more aspects of this book that are unusual, like visits to a Union prison for Confederate POWs and mentions of former slaves going to Liberia. And while I am not a huge fan of token appearances by such famous personages as Frederick Douglass and the Lincolns, as well as the simplified nature in which Sherman's March in particular is portrayed, this is a pretty cool novel that moves past the most famous battles and aspects of the war to describe the experiences of someone who, rather than taking sides in the conflict, is caught completely in its crossfire. show less