Showing results by narrator "Janet Metzger" in All Categories

Twelve-year-old Mary Frances “Frankie” Jackson has been sent to California for the summer to live on a houseboat with her Aunt Roxy. There’s one catch—she can’t get in trouble, or it’s back to New Jersey and juvenile detention camp. Too bad that days after arriving at the houseboat community, Frankie is accused of animal cruelty (killing a cat) and has two weeks to prove her innocence. In the process, she gets to know all the eccentrics on the dock.

Most of us look forward to our retirement from full-time work, anticipating more free time and opportunities to play. But the reality of retirement can be hard to adjust to. Unexpected challenges may present themselves, leading us to question who we really are and what we can reasonably expect to accomplish in the remaining years of our lives. We may be confused by our changing relationships with family and friends, which no longer conform to an easy structure.

As far as 12-year-old Frankie Jackson is concerned, mermaids are like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny—stuff made up by grown-ups so that they can sell movies and toys. At least that’s what Frankie’s dad once told her. But one day, while staying on a houseboat for the summer, Frankie finds herself face-to-face with a mermaid. Convinced that it is a dream, Frankie can’t shake the vision of the blue-haired sea creature. Meanwhile, the town of Sausalito is buzzing with rumors about a wealthy woman who disappeared into the Bay wearing a million-dollar necklace (shaped like a mermaid).

In a world of border walls and obstacles to migration, a lottery where winners can gain permanent residency in the United States sounds too good to be true. Just as unlikely is the idea that the United States would make such visas available to foster diversity within a country where systemic racism endures. But in 1990, the United States Diversity Visa Lottery was created to do just that. Dreamland tells the surprising story of this unlikely government program and its role in American life as well as the global story of migration.

A Promise Kept explores the circumstances and implications of McGirt v. Oklahoma, likely the most significant Indian law case in well over a hundred years. Combining legal analysis and historical context, this book gives an in-depth, accessible account of how the case unfolded and what it might mean for Oklahomans, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and other tribes throughout the United States.

All families have secrets but the facts requiring secrecy change with time. Nowadays a lesbian partnership, a "bastard" son, or a criminal grandfather might be of little or no consequence but could have unraveled a family at an earlier moment in history. Margaret K. Nelson is interested in how families keep secrets from each other and from outsiders when to do otherwise would risk eliciting not only embarrassment or discomfort, but profound shame and, in some cases, danger.

Antebellum New Orleans sat at the heart of America's slave and cotton kingdoms. It was also where yellow fever epidemics killed as many as 150,000 people during the nineteenth century. With little understanding of mosquito-borne viruses, a person's only protection against the scourge was to "get acclimated" by surviving the disease. Repeated epidemics bolstered New Orleans's strict racial hierarchy by introducing another hierarchy, what Kathryn Olivarius terms "immunocapital." Whereas immunity conferred privilege on whites, it relegated enslaved people to the most grueling labor.

Seattle attorney and media legal analyst Anne Bremner takes us inside some of the biggest cases of recent times and offers her expert insights and analysis as our legal system faces unprecedented forces fighting to tip the scales of justice their way. Justice in the Age of Judgement is Bremner’s unparalleled and unflinching look at the captivating cases tried on Twitter and TV, where the burden of proof and fundamental legal tenet of “innocent until proven guilty” is under assault from the court of public opinion.

An in-depth look at the life of Oakland, California native, Barclay Simpson, Strong Ties focuses on the set of convictions and leadership qualities that allowed Simpson to build a successful business from nothing and to become one of the major philanthropists in the San Francisco Bay Area.

When 22-year-old Susan Stachler was diagnosed with cancer, her mother, Laura, was struck by déjà vu. The same illness that took her sister's life was threatening to take her daughter's too. Heartbroken but steadfast, Laura pledged to help Susan through the worst of her treatments. When they discovered that Laura's homemade ginger cookies soothed the side effects of Susan's chemotherapy, the mother - daughter duo soon found themselves opening the business "Susansnaps" and sharing their gourmet gingersnaps with the world.

In 1865, the Civil War was winding down and the country was reeling from Lincoln's assassination. Thousands of Union soldiers, released from Confederate prisoner-of-war camps, were to be transported home on the steamboat Sultana. With a profit to be made, the captain rushed repairs to the ship so the soldiers wouldn't find transportation elsewhere. More than 2,000 passengers boarded in Vicksburg, Mississippi...on a boat with a capacity of 376.

Suddenly single after twenty-two years of marriage, the calm of Katherine Price's midlife has turned upside down. Seeking to find her true self, she took a chance on starting over. A year later, she is certain of this: she's in love with Philippe and adores his idyllic French homeland, where he wants her to live with him. But all that feels like a fantasy far removed from Toronto, where she's helping her friend Molly, hospitalized after a life-threatening accident.

The painful memories from her life back in Toronto will never be distant enough, but Katherine Price finds peace under the autumn sky in the South of France...and a deepening, dizzying love with Philippe. Together, they savor the delicacies and splendor of life, toasting to a future filled with happiness and hope - a life far away from the heartache they both knew so well.

A seven-year-old girl breaks through the hysteria and violence of a dysfunctional mother in this story of small triumphs.

Thaisa Frank works with what the New York Times has called "a tantalizing sense of indirection," in this short work of surrealistic fiction, as she writes about a couple who begin to spin the most mundane topics into fantastical bedtime stories for one another. Their narratives reveal what neither will say to each other directly and end in a surprising admission of truth.

In this 2010 Pushcart Prize-nominated essay, Thaisa Frank describes a cultural clash between a Muslim student and her professor. Though the misunderstanding at first seems poised to derail one life, if not two, it yields an empathic glimpse into a different culture.

In 1933 in the Shenandoah Valley, there isn't a place for Lum (short for Columbia), a 33-year-old intersex woman. She travels by schedule from one branch of the family to another, assisting with cooking, childcare, and housework. Always an outsider, even in her own family, Lum secretly collects postcards of people like the Dog-faced Girl, imagining their stories, and nurtures her lifelong friendship with Smiley, an African-American man who sells furniture, odds and ends, and a little moonshine.

Ronnie's husband is supposed to move out today. But when Jeff pulls into the driveway drunk, with a shotgun in the front seat, she realizes nothing about the day will go as planned.

An emotionally riveting tale of the bonds of family and the power of hope in the sultry Deep South

In 1969, the first footsteps on the moon brighten America with possibilities. But along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, a category five storm is brewing, and the Blake sisters of Biloxi are restless for change. Beth "Sis" Blake has always been the caretaker, the dutiful one, with the weight of her family's happiness—and their secrets—on her shoulders. She dreams of taking off to pursue her own destiny, but not before doing whatever it takes to rescue her sister.

Emily Blake, an unwed mother trying to live down her past, wants the security of marriage for the sake of her five-year-old son, Andy. But secure is the last thing she feels with her new husband. Now she must put aside pride, and trust family to help her find the courage to escape.

With Hurricane Camille stirring up havoc, two sisters—each desperate to break free—begin a remarkable journey where they'll discover that in the wake of destruction lies new life, unshakable strength and the chance to begin again. Dreams are reborn and the unforgettable force of friendship is revealed in The Oleander Sisters, an extraordinary story of courage, love and sacrifice.

Trapped in no man's land in the final days of World War I, Private Ransom James MacTavish consoles a dying Lieutenant by reading to him the letters of his fiancee, Elizabeth, a high born Charleston Lady. When the officer dies, Ransom is stranded alone between the American and German trenches. His sole comfort is reading the elegant letters from the officer's fiancee. Although he is penniless, Ransom comes home determined to win Elizabeth's heart but soon discovers he must compete with a wealthy suitor.