The Bears of Blue River describes the adventures of a young boy growing up in early nineteenth-century rural Indiana. Little Balser lives with his parents, a younger brother, and a baby sister in a cozy log cabin on the bank of the Big Blue River. Although only thirteen or fourteen years old, he is quite familiar with the dangers and rigors of frontier life. As the story unfolds, the boy becomes lost in the forest, encounters the fierce one-eared...

When teenage heartthrob Luke Stryker shows up at a small-town Indiana high school to do research for a movie role, he persuades junior Jenny Greenley to use her considerable talents to try to change things at school for the better.

Regional novel by Edward Eggleston, first serialized in Hearth and Home in 1871 and published in book form the same year. The novel is primarily of interest for its naturalism, its setting in rural Indiana, and its extensive use of Hoosier dialect. Based partially on the experiences of the author's brother, the novel relates episodes in the lives of inhabitants of a backwoods Indiana town as well as the experiences of the young man who is hired to...

Set in the Limberlost Swamp area of Indiana, “Freckles” is American writer and naturalist Gene Stratton-Porter's 1904 novel about the titular character, a one-handed adult orphan who takes a job guarding timber in the swamp. Freckles has lived all his life in a Chicago orphanage and has been missing his right hand as long as he can remember. Now an adult, he is hired on by the Grand Rapids lumber company to guard their valuable timber in the Limberlost...

In 1972, Flora Smallwood, nine, copes with her parents' separation with the help of her friends, Yury and Nessie, a new pet, and the familiar routines of life in Rosetown, Indiana.

Little Sister, the twelfth and youngest of the Stanton children, is not regarded at her birth as a particularly welcome addition to the family, but as the years pass she proves herself to be a blessing,especially when she is instrumental in bringing together her beloved brother Laddie and their neighbor, Pamela Pryor.