Most Popular Books by Carolyn Reeder

Twelve-year-old Edward thought of Simon as his friend and never imagined life without his companion and slave. But when the Union army invades Virginia and takes over Edward''s family''s plantation, Edward''s family flees to nearby Petersburg, while Simon runs toward freedom. With terrific detail and historical facts woven throughout, the author crafts a story set during the actual siege at Petersburg, complete with battle scenes, descriptions of army life on both sides of the war, and what life was like, told from the point of view of two young boys--one white and one black.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, recently orphaned Will must start a new life and overcome his prejudices. Courage wears many faces… The Civil War may be over, but for twelve-year-old Will Page, the pain and bitterness haven’t ended. How could they have, when the Yankees were responsible for the deaths of everyone in his entire immediate family? And now Will has to leave his comfortable home in the Shenandoah Valley and live with relatives he has never met, people struggling to eke out a living on their farm in the war-torn Virginia Piedmont. But the worst of it is that Will’s uncle Jed had refused to fight for the Confederacy. At first, Will regards his uncle as a traitor—or at least a coward. But as they work side by side, Will begins to respect the man. And when he sees his uncle stand up for what he believes in, Will realizes that he must rethink his definition of honor and courage.

Twelve-year-old Tom Higgins is learning the craft of making whiskey. Even though Prohibition forbids the production and sale of alcoholic beverages, Tom is determined to be a good apprentice. He is, after all, a moonshiner''s son. His father has raised moonshining to an art, and Tom wants nothing more than to please this rough, distant man. Then a preacher comes to the wilds of Virginia''s Blue Ridge Mountains to rid Bad Camp Hollow of the "evils of liquor." This is when Tom and his father begin their campaign to match wits with the preacher and try to outsmart the law officers he calls in. Tom''s father is eloquent in defense of a way of life long and respectfully lived by the Higgins family. But the preacher and his pretty daughter make a powerful case against it. And when drink causes a tragedy in the community, Tom Higgins is torn....

During the Depression, eleven-year-old Carrie makes her annual summer visit to her relatives in the Blue Ridge Mountains and watches her determined grandfather fight against the government''s attempt to take his farm land for a new national park.

When his older brother joins the army during World War II in order to escape the rages of an authoritarian father, eleven-year-old Foster fights his battles on the homefront.

Determined to take her father''s coal-carrying barge on the C & O Canal from Cumberland, Maryland, to Georgetown in D.C., twelve-year-old Kate learns hurtful truths about herself.

The Shenandoah National Park is in parts of the following Virginia counties: Albemarle, Augusta, Greene, Madison, Page, Rappahannock, Rockingham, and Warren.

A tattered flag above Fort Sumter . . . riots in the streets . . . Union troops occupying private homes and harassing citizens . . . The months before the first major battle of the Civil War were marked by confusion, deep emotion, and bitter divisions between families, neighbors, and friends. Timothy Donovan, a bugler at Fort Sumter; Joseph Schwartz, a scholarship student from a working-class family in Baltimore; and Gregory Howard, son of a wealthy man in Alexandria, Virginia, all find their loyalties challenged by the gathering storm. For Timothy, the threat of bombardment by rebel troops, coupled with a near-starvation diet in a garrison that is under siege, forces him to question what it really means to lay down one''s life for one''s flag. Joseph''s family is fiercely Unionist, but his privileged classmates -- including his one real friend -- are staunchly in favor of secession. And Gregory''s Unionist father has disinherited Gregory''s older brother, who, like the rest of the family, remains loyal to the South. Shades of Gray author Carolyn Reeder shows the complexities of life in a time of fear, excitement, and overwhelming change in these three interlinked stories about the months before the first major battle of the Civil War.

Years have passed since corn and cabbage grew in Shenandoah. The open land where cattle grazed is forest now. We sometimes forget that generations of people lived out their lives in the mountains we visit for recreation and renewal. The careful observer can find vestiges of the mountain people and their way of life in Shenandoah National Park -- farm sites, tools and utensils, graves, and subtle signs in the forest itself. For though time and vegetation have obscured much of the human history of Shenandoah, a century and a half of habitation cannot be completely erased. Man left his mark here as he struggled for survival. -- From introduction.

Timothy Donovan isn''t a coward ... not exactly. But he is prickly, overly defensive, stubborn to a fault, and not precisely certain he really wants to give his life for his country. In the first part of her Before the Creeks Ran Red trilogy, Reeder sets her young bugler in Charleston Harbor during the months leading to the firing on Fort Sumter and the irrevocable declaration of war between North and South that event precipitates. Along the way she takes on other complex topics: petty feuding between the non-commissioned men; the lack of faith in Sumter''s southern-bred, vacillating commandant; near-starvation conditions within the blockaded island fortress. By the time the Stars and Stripes are lowered and Fort Sumter is evacuated, Timothy has done some maturing. But he''s still not sure he wants to die for the Union. This is a provocative thought. That the choice might not be his is another one.

Moving with his parents to a remote New Mexico location in the 1940s, twelve-year-old Fritz becomes suspicious about his father''s secret work and begins to keep notes about events unfolding at the end of World War II.

Joseph doesn''t want his privileged classmates at the Academy to know he''s a scholarship student form a working-class family. Or that his parents are immigrants. And he certainly doesn''t want them to know he''s a Unionist--not when they all hope that Maryland will secede and join the Confederacy.