Orem Library

Looking back at a tragic event that occurred during his thirteenth year, Frank Drum explores how a complicated web of secrets, adultery, and betrayal shattered his Methodist family and their small 1961 Minnesota community.

Along with his sister and father, eleven-year-old Reuben finds himself on a cross-country search for his outlaw older brother who has been charged with murder.

"College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same. Iverson is a dying Vietnam veteran--and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has been...

Ruth draws on her talent for concocting delectable cakes and desserts when her family begins to disintegrate around her--her husband loses his job, her mother moves in, and her long-estranged father shows up at the door with no place to go.

"Hannah's up to her ears with Easter orders rushing in at The Cookie Jar, plus a festive meal to prepare for a dinner party at her mother's penthouse. But everything comes crashing to a halt when Hannah receives a panicked call from her sister Andrea - Mayor Richard Bascomb has been murdered ... and Andrea is the prime suspect. Even with his reputation for being a bully, Mayor Bascomb - or "Ricky Ticky," as Hannah's mother likes to call him - had...

Merrill Krause longs for a family of her own, but she's bound by a promise to her dying mother to care for her father and older brothers until they no longer need her. She enjoys being part of the family business, harvesting ice during the brutal Minnesota winters. Merrill actively takes part, possessing a keen ability to work with the horses--despite the advice of her good friend, who disapproves of her unladylike behavior. When Rurik Jorgenson arrives...

"In 1910, Signe, her husband, and their boys emigrate from Norway to Minnesota, dreaming of one day owning a farm of their own. But the relatives they've come to stay with are harsh and demanding. As Signe's family is worked to the bone to repay the cost of their voyage, can she learn to trust God through this trial and hold on to hope for a better future?"--

Nilda Carlson and her younger brother Ivar come to America to join her older brother Rune and his family on the Strand farm in Minnesota. Uncle Einar Strand refuses to help Rune build a house for his family and forbids the community to come onto his land. Can the tragedy that reveals Einar's anger and isolation bring the Carlsons and Strands together into a true family?

Having been abducted at age seven, abandoned, a foster child, and homeless, Ethan, is happy to be home until his brother's suspicion and his own inability to remember something unspeakable from his early childhood begin to tear the family apart.

After getting married and settling at Wild Plum Creek, Charles' and Caroline's lives are turned upside down when disaster strikes and Charles goes east to find work. Caroline and their baby survive the winter in a sod house on their homestead.