A portrait of life in a quiet English country town in the mid-nineteenth century follows the adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged spinster sisters living in reduced circumstances.

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm Eleven-year-old Rebecca is leaving Sunnybrook Farm to live with her spinster aunts and become the educated daughter her family needs. Her aunts resent her father, who left behind nothing for his wife and seven children but a forty-eight-dollar mortgage. When Rebecca climbs out of the stagecoach with her pink parasol, wide-eyed and nervous about her new life, she is quickly met with the strict rules of Aunt Miranda, who has...

Ex-slave Sadie Watson reveals to her granddaughter her experiences while in bondage and the love she had for her husband, Jim, who escaped down the Mississippi with Huck Finn when he learned he was to be sold.