Crowley County Combined Library

The Dunnes have set off on a ten day boat trip, a trip that hopefully will bring them closer together, despite the fact that the father, Stuart is staying behind on land. But only an hour into the trip they're already falling apart. The teenage daughter plans to drown herself, and the teenage boy is high on drugs. Ten-year-old Ernie is near catatonic. But their mother Anne, with the help of her brother-in-law Jeff, is insistent on pulling everyone...

When his parents decide to separate, eighth-grader Donnie watches with horror as the physical condition of his sixteen-year old sister, Karen, deteriorates due to an eating disorder.

Walls, who spent years trying to hide her childhood experiences, allows the story to spill out in this recollection of growing up. From her current perspective as a contributor to MSNBC online, she remembers the poverty, hunger, jokes, and bullying she and her siblings endured, and she looks back at her parents: her flighty, self-indulgent mother, a Pollyanna unwilling to assume the responsibilities of parenting, and her father, troubled, brilliant...

It happens quietly one August morning. As dawn's shimmering light drenches the humid Iowa air, two families awaken to find their little girls have gone missing in the night. Seven-year-old Calli Clark is sweet, gentle, a dreamer who suffers from selective mutism brought on by tragedy that pulled her deep into silence as a toddler. Calli's mother, Antonia, tried to be the best mother she could within the confines of marriage to a mostly absent, often...

Marly had been waiting a long time for this special momwnt. She sat alone in the car and stared at the lonely countryside and the small dilapidated house. It had to be the right place. All outdoors. With miracles. Not crowded and people being cross and mean. Daddy not tired all the time. Mothernot worried. She whispered, "Please let there be miracles."

When Micky Bellsong encounters disabled Leilani Klonk and her stepfather, Preston Maddoc, she finally finds some purpose in her troubled life, so when the family disappears, Micky embarks on an arduous mission to find them

Throughout her childhood, Melie believes her mother is two people--Rosy Mother and Dark Mother--and she performs more and more rituals to keep Dark Mother away as she reaches adolescence, when she begins to realize that her mother is mentally ill and that Melie may be, as well.

Since the death of his mother, Tobin's family life and school life have been in disarray, but after he starts raising chickens with his seventh-grade classmate, Henry, everything starts to fall into place.

Brennan and Dale are two middle-aged loafers who are forced to live together when their parents get married. When their immature antics over TV privileges and personal property take their toll on their parents' marriage, the devious duo hatch a scheme to reunite the couple.

Feeling like she does not fit in with the other members of her family, who are all thin, brilliant, and good-looking, fifteen-year-old Virginia tries to deal with her self-image, her first physical relationship, and her disillusionment with some of the people closest to her.