Historical Fiction Project
U.S. History
The Immigrant Experience
“The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respected Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges…”
George Washington
Ausch, Mary Jane
Ashes of Roses
Sixteen-year-old Margaret Rose Nolan, newly arrived from Ireland, finds work at New York City's Triangle Shirtwaist Factory shortly before the 1911 fire in which 146 employees died.
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Carnegie's Maid
Clara Kelley, who travels in steerage from Ireland, lands in Philadelphia in 1863, and is mistaken for an identically named fellow passenger who has died during the passage. Desperate to improve her family’s fortune, she assumes the other Clara’s place as a lady’s maid to the formidable Margaret Carnegie, mother to brothers Andrew and Tom.
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Haddix, Margaret Peterson
Uprising
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.
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Kline, Christina Baker
Orphan Train
Between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children whose fates would be determined by luck and chance. This is the story of one such child.
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Lee, Stacey
Outrun the Moon
Fifteen-year-old Mercy Wong is determined to break from the poverty of Chinatown, and an education at St. Clare’s School for Girls is her best hope. But on April 18, 1906 a historic earthquake rocks San Francisco, destroying Mercy’s home and school.
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Myers, Walter Dean
Riot
In 1863, fifteen-year-old Claire, the daughter of an Irish mother and a black father, faces ugly truths and great danger when Irish immigrants, enraged by the Civil War and a federal draft, lash out against blacks and wealthy "swells" of New York City.
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Paterson, Katherine
Bread and Roses, too
Jake and Rosa, two children, form an unlikely friendship as they try to survive and understand the 1912 Bread and Roses strike of mill workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts.