1
United States History - Fiction Books
*** not in IMC collection
The 19th Century
Uncommon Faith (F Krisher) - In 1837-38, residents of Millbrook, Massachusetts, speak in their
different voices of major issues of their day, including women's rights, slavery, religious
differences, and one fiery girl named Faith
Three Rivers Rising: A Novel of the Johnstown Flood A tragic event in U.S. history - the 1889
flood in Johnstown, Pennsylvania - is the backdrop for this cross-class romance.
The Unresolved (F Welsh) - In 1904 New York City, the spirit of a deceased German American
teenage girl searches for the person responsible for the Slocum steamboat fire that claimed her
life and the lives of more than 1000 other passengers.
The Luxe (F Godbersen) - In 1899 Manhattan, the drowning of beautiful Elizabeth Holland,
daughter of New York society's ruling family, brings to the surface the scandalous behavior of
several teenagers of varying social class
The West
Shane (F Schaefer) - A stranger rides into a small Western town in 1889 and creates a lasting
impact on its inhabitants, especially on young Bob Starrett and his family.
Telegraphy Days: a Novel (F McMurtry) - Meet the big gunfighters of the Wild West (Billie
the Kid, the Earp Brothers, and Doc Holliday) through the eyes of a woman who could be called
a pistol herself, Nellie Courtright.
Half Broken Horses (Walls) - Lily Casey Smith grows up breaking horses with her father and
leaves home at fifteen to ride five hundred miles in order to teach in a frontier town before
encountering various difficulties, marrying a rancher, and speaking out against prejudice in
various parts of the U.S.
Lonesome Dove (F McMurtry) -A novel about the last defiant wilderness of America. Journey
to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove and meet an unforgettable assortment of heroes
and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always
dramatic, Lonesome Dove is a book to make us laugh, weep, dream, and remember.
Holy Road (F Blake) - Eleven years have passed since Lieutenant John Dunbar became the
Comanche warrior Dances With Wolves and married Stands With A Fist, a white-born woman
2
raised as a Comanche from early childhood. With their three children, they live peacefully in the
village of Ten Bears. But there is unease in the air, caused by increased reports of violent
confrontations with white soldiers, who want to drive the Comanches onto reservations–a
movement symbolized by the railroad, the white man’s holy road. Disquiet turns to horror, and
then to rage, when a band of white rangers descends on Ten Bears’ village, slaughtering half its
inhabitants and abducting Stands With A Fist and her infant daughter. The three surviving great
warriors–Wind In His Hair, Kicking Bird, and Dances With Wolves –decide they must go to war
with the white inva-ders. At the same time, Dances With Wolves realizes that only he can move
unnoticed among the white men to rescue his wife and child
The Way to Bright Star (F Brown) - During the Civil War, a young man battles Indians, bandits
and deserters as he escorts two camels across Kansas and Missouri
The Best of the Breed (F L’Amour) –
Mckettrick’s Choice (F Miller) - Holt, the eldest McKettrick son, returns to his family home in
Texas to make peace with his past and save the man who raised him, but his involvement with
Lorelei Fellows complicates Holt's efforts to keep his trip short and remain unattached to his
family home.
O’Pioneers (Cather) - Alexandra, daughter of a Swedish immigrant farmer in Nebraska, inherits
the family farm and finds love with an old friend.
The Last Frontier (F Fast) - Tells the story of the Cheyenne Indians in the 1870's, and their
strugle to flee from the Indian Territory in Oklahoma back to their home in Wyoming and
Montana.
20th Century
Ragtime (E. L. Doctorow) –
***The Miner’s Daughter by Gretchen Laskas - Sixteen-year-old Willa, living in a Depressionera West Virginia mining town, works hard to help her family. She experiences love and
friendship, and finds an outlet for her writing when her family becomes part of the Arthurdale,
West Virginia, community supported by Eleanor Roosevelt.
****The Rock and the River by Kekla Magoon - In 1968 Chicago, fourteen-year-old Sam
Childs is caught in a conflict between his father's nonviolent approach to seeking civil rights for
African Americans and his older brother, who has joined the Black Panther Party.
Uprising by Margaret Haddix (F Haddix) - In 1927, at the urging of twenty-one-year-old
Harriet, Mrs. Livingston reluctantly recalls her experiences at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory,
3
including miserable working conditions that led to a strike, then the fire that took the lives of her
two best friends, when Harriet, the boss's daughter, was only five years old. Includes historical
notes.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (f Taylor) - An African-American family living in Mississippi
during the Depression of the 1930s is faced with prejudice and discrimination which its children
do not understand.
Sources of Lights (F McMullen) - Sam, having moved with her mother to Jackson, Mississippi,
after the death of her father, finds the conservative 1960s values of the town clashing with her
family's liberal views and struggles to navigate difficult relationships and understand
segregation.
Starplace (F Grove) - Thirteen-year-old Frannie learns hard lessons about prejudice and
segregation on when she becomes friends with a young black girl who moves into her small
Oklahoma town in 1961
Shorty Spooner (F Blue) - Four different points of view about thecivil rights movement in 1950s
Alabama are expressed by people involved in the country's painful process of overcoming
stereotypes and racial division.
***Shackleton’s Stowaway by Victorial McKernan A fictionalized account of the adventures of
eighteen-year-old Perce Blackborow, who stowed away for the 1914 Shackleton Antarctic
expedition and, after their ship Endurance was crushed by ice, endured many hardships,
including the loss of the toes of his left foot to frostbite, during the nearly two-year return
journey across sea and ice.
Giant (Ferber) – The story of Leslie Benedict, a New England woman who meets and marries a
Texas rancher whose life is consumed by a rivalry with Jett Rink, a former employee who made
good.
Homeland (F Jakes) - Story of a German American family in Chicago, Ill. struggling to live the
American dream.
The Given Day (F Lehane) - During the bloody police riots of the early twentieth century, a
Boston police officer from a wealthy family, Danny Coughlin, joins a union movement to track
down violent radicals, but his values are challenged when he learns that Luther Laurence, the
African-American houseman who works for the Coughlin family, is connected with the NAACP.
Flygirl (F Smith) - During World War II, a light-skinned African American girl "passes" for
white in order to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots.
4
Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller (F Miller ) - At age twenty-one, partially-blind, lonely
but spirited Annie Sullivan travels from Massachusetts to Alabama to try and teach six-year-old
Helen Keller, deaf and blind since age two, self-discipline and communication skills. Includes
historical notes and timeline.
Spite Fences (Krisher) - Thirteen-year-old Maggie Pugh lives in Kinship, Georgia. It is a town
where if you're poor, you live on the west side of town and if you're rich,you live on the north
end. If you're white, you use one bathroom at Byer's Drugs and if you're black, you use another.
All that starts to changein the summer of 1960.
Stormy Weather (F Jiles) - After their father's death, the three Stoddard girls travel with their
mother back to the family farm where they struggle to survive during the Dust Bowl and put all
of their faith in the success of a wildcat oil well.
The Fire-eaters (F Almond) - Despite observing his father's illness and the suffering of the fireeating Mr. McNulty, as well as enduring abuse at school and the stress of the Cuban Missile
Crisis, Bobby Burns and his family and friends, living in England in 1962, still find reasons to
rejoice in their lives and to have hope for the future.
Monkey Town: the Story of the Scopes Trials (F Kidd) - When her father hatches a plan to bring
publicity to their small Tennessee town by arresting a local high school teacher for teaching
about evolution, the resulting 1925 Scopes trial prompts fifteen-year-old Frances to rethink many
of her beliefs about religion and truth, as well as her relationship with her father
The Spirit Catchers (F Kudlinski) - During the Great Depression, fifteen-year-old Parker finds
himself homeless and traveling across New Mexico's desert, when a shepherd leads him to the
artist Georgia O'Keeffe who teaches him photography and gives him a new perspective on life.
The Lightning Keeper (F Lawrence) - Arriving in New York in 1914, inventor Toma Pekocevic
designs a powerful water turbine that leads to a career within General Electric and a love affair
with Harriet Bigelow, the daughter of a New England dynasty that has fallen on hard times.
***Hesse, Karen. A Time of Angels. - Sick with influenza during the 1918 epidemic and
separated from her two sisters, a young Jewish girl living in Boston relies on the help of an old
German man, and her visions of angels, to get better and to reunite herself with her family.
Shanghai Girls (F See) - Sisters Pearl and May Chin are forced into marriages to Chinese men
living in America after their father gambles away his wealth; but life in America proves more
difficult than they expected
Prayers for Sale (F Dallas) - In 1936 Middle Swan, Colorado, eighty-six-year-old Hennie
Comfort befriends seventeen-year-old Nit Spindle, who recently lost a daughter and whose
husband works on a dredge boat, by inviting her into her knitting circle and passing down stories
about the small town.
5
Scottsboro (F Feldman) - Alice Whittier, a crusading young journalist in 1931, leaves New York
and travels to Scottsboro, Alabama, to cover the trial of nine African-American boys who have
been accused of raping two white prostitutes who happened to be riding on the same freight train
as the boys.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (F Ford) - Henry Lee, a Chinese-American in Seattle,
loses his wife to cancer and recalls his youth, when he and his Japanese-American friend, Keiko,
spent time together during WWII--before Keiko and her family were interred at a camp--and
deals with generational difficulties between himself and his father and college-age son.
Refugees (F Stine) - Dawn, a California teen who has run away to New York, tries to contact her
foster mother Louise, a Red Cross doctor in Pakistan, following the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001, and instead reaches Louise's assistant, Johar, a refugee from Afghanistan,
and the two form a bond that gives them both hope and courage to face the future.
The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (F Alexie) - Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his
troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school
where the only other Native American is the school mascot.
Falling Many (F Delillo) - Keith Neudecker, a survivor of the terrorist attack on the World Trade
Center, returns home from the ruins to his wife Lianne, from whom he had separated, and his
young son Justin, and finds in the aftermath that he has become a very different man.
Who Will Tell My Brother (F Carvell) - During his lonely crusade to remove offensive
mascots from his high school, a Native American teenager learns more about his heritage, his
ancestors, and his place in the world.
The Quiet American (F Greene) - In 1950s Indochina, an English correspondent observes a wellintentioned but misguided young American military advisor covertly setting up a "Third Force"
to replace the French-backed emperor, and then takes actions to stop him when they become
embroiled in a love triangle.
Crossing Stones (Frost) - Four young people in two families tell of their experience during
World War I when the boys enlist and are sent to fight, Emma finishes school, and Muriel joins
the suffrage movement
The Glory Field (F Myers) - This captivating saga of one black family takes readers on a journey
from slavery to modern times. The book features teenagers from five generations, each
undergoing a crisis that leads them to maturity. The collection of stories is compelling. Together
they present a dynamic portrait of the progress of black people in the United States. A riveting,
important book for all Americans.
Love Medicine (F Erdrich) - Presents the story of the Kashpaws and the Lamartines, two
extended families who live on and around a Chippewa reservation in North Dakota and of Lipsha
6
Morrissey, a young man who attempts to bring his wandering grandfather back to his longsuffering grandmother with a love medicine made from goosehearts.
The Help (F Stockett) - Skeeter returns home to Mississippi from college in 1962 and begins to
write stories about the African-American women that are found working in white households,
which includes Aibileen, who grieves for the loss of her son while caring for her seventeenth
white child, and Minny, Aibileen's sassy friend, the hired cook for a secretive woman who is new
to town.
Shorty Spooner (F Blue) - Four different points of view about the civil rights movement in
1950s Alabama are expressed by people involved in the country's painful process of overcoming
stereotypes and racial division.
Weedflower (F Kadohata) - After twelve-year-old Sumiko and her Japanese-American family
are relocated from their flower farm in southern California to an internment camp on a Mojave
Indian reservation in Arizona, she helps her family and neighbors, becomes friends with a local
Indian boy, and tries to hold on to her dream of owning a flower shop.
After This (F McDermott) - John and Mary Keane and their four children, Michael, Annie,
Jacob, and Clare, battle the tumultuous political, social, and spiritual upheavals of the 1950s and
1960s.
Spite Fences (F Krisher) - Thirteen-year-old Maggie Pugh lives in Kinship, Georgia. It is a town
where if you're poor, you live on the west side of town and if you're rich,you live on the north
end. If you're white, you use one bathroom at Byer's Drugs and if you're black, you use another.
All that starts to changein the summer of 1960.
The Manchurian Candidate (F Condon) - Buried deep within the consciousness of Sergeant
Raymond Shaw is the mechanism of an assassin-a time bomb ticking toward explosion,
controlled by the delicate skill of its Communist masters
Fiction Books About US Wars
Civil War
The Price of a Child (F Carey) - While traveling with her master, Ginnie, a slave from Virginia,
daringly walks away from slavery into freedom with two of her children. She begins a new life in
Philadelphia as Mercer Gray, and there she becomes a fierce abolitionist, determined to rescue
the baby son she had to leave behind
The Last Full Measure (F Shaara) - A dramatization of the confrontations between Robert E.
Lee, Lawrence Chamberlain, and Ulysses S. Grant during the last two years of the Civil War.
7
The Killer Angels (F M. Shaara) - A fictional account of four days in July, 1863 at the Battle of
Gettysburg discussing tactics, plans, and preparations for battle from both the Northern and
Southern points of view.
Red Moon at Sharpsburg (F Wells) - Even though the odds are against her and the Civil War
has ruined her home and given her a view of the darker side of humanity, thirteen-year-old India
Moody continues to aspire to become a scientist and attend Oberlin College.
Riot by Walter Dean Myers - In 1863, Irish immigrants, enraged by the Civil War and a federal
draft, lash out against blacks and wealthy swells of New York City.
164 p. 2009
World War I
Skies Over Sweetwater (F Moberg) - In 1944, eighteen-year-old Bernadette Thompson leaves
her Iowa home and attends training camp for the Women Airforce Service Pilots in Sweetwater
Texas, where she hones her flying skills and befriends women of different backgrounds.
Crossing Stones by Helen Frost - Four young people in two families tell of their experience
during World War I when the boys enlist and are sent to fight, Emma finishes school, and Muriel
joins the suffrage movement.
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson - Chronicles the last and fatal
voyage of the Lusitania, moving between events on the luxury ocean liner as it returned to its
home port of Liverpool from New York City to those on the German submarine U-20.
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (F Remarque) - Depicts the
experiences of a group of young German soldiers fighting and suffering during the last days of
World War I.
Johnny Got His Gun – Dalton Trumbo (F Trumbo) - young man who was severely wounded in
World War I thinks about his life and about the horror and futility of war and its toll on him.
World War II
Miracle at St. Anna (F McBride) - Fout American soldiers seek refuge in the small village of St.
Anna di Stazzema in Tuscany during World War II, never imagining how the events which take
place there will change their lives forever.
Weedflower (F Kadohata ) - After twelve-year-old Sumiko and her Japanese-American family
are relocated from their flower farm in southern California to an internment camp on a Mojave
Indian reservation in Arizona, she helps her family and neighbors, becomes friends with a local
Indian boy, and tries to hold on to her dream of owning a flower shop.
8
Code Talker (F Bruchac) - After being taught in a boarding school run by whites that Navajo is a
useless language, Ned Begay and other Navajo men are recruited by the Marines to become
Code Talkers, sending messages during World War II in their native tongue.
Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum – (F Blum) - Trudy Swenson, haunted by her German
heritage, embarks upon a deeper investigation of her past and uncovers secrets her mother has
kept hidden for five decades.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne (F Boyne) - Bored and lonely after his family
moves from Berlin to a place called "Out-With" in 1942, Bruno, the son of a Nazi officer,
befriends a boy in striped pajamas who lives behind a wire fence.
Code Talker by John Bruchac - (F Bruchac) - Bored and lonely after his family moves from
Berlin to a place called "Out-With" in 1942, Bruno, the son of a Nazi officer, befriends a boy in
striped pajamas who lives behind a wire fence.
Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene (F Greene) - Sheltering an escaped prisoner of
war is the beginning of some shattering experiences for a twelve-year-old girl in Arkansas.
Color of the Sea by John Hamamuro – (F Hamamuro) - Sam's pain over losing the love of his
life when her parents take her back to Japan is overshadowed when he is drafted by the U.S.
Army and sent to Japan on a secret mission that forces Sam to choose between his loyalties to
America and loyalties to his heritage.
The Bird Skinner (F Greenway) - Forced to abandon his ornithology work after being wounded
in combat, World War II veteran Jim Carroway secludes himself on a tiny island off the coast of
Maine, where an old friend's captivating daughter draws him out of isolation during the month
before she starts college.
A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (F Hersey) - During World War II an American Major is
placed in charge of the Italian village of Adano
B for Buster by Ian Lawrence (F Lawrence) - Sixteen-year-old Kak, desperate to escape his
abusive parents, lies about his age in the spring of 1943 to enlist in the Canadian Air Force and
soon finds himself based in England as part of a crew flying bombing raids over Germany.
Room in the Heart by Sonia Levitin (F Levitin) - Sixteen-year-old Kak, desperate to escape his
abusive parents, lies about his age in the spring of 1943 to enlist in the Canadian Air Force and
soon finds himself based in England as part of a crew flying bombing raids over Germany.
Miracle at St. Anna by James McBride (F McBride) - Four American soldiers seek refuge in the
small village of St. Anna di Stazzema in Tuscany during World War II, never imagining how the
events which take place there will change their lives forever.
Slaughter House Five (F Vonnegut) - A fourth-generation German-American is tortured by his
memories of the firebombing of Dresden in 1944 which he witnessed while a prisoner of war.
9
The Rising Tide by Jeff Shaara (F Shaara) - Presents a comprehensive historical novel that
covers World War II from Hitler's control of Western Europe to the conquest of Italy and the
Normandy invasion.
The series continues with The Steel Wave and to the Last Man
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (F Vonnegut) - A fourth-generation German-American is
tortured by his memories of the firebombing of Dresden in 1944 which he witnessed while a
prisoner or war.
Soldier X by Don Wulffson (F Wul) - In 1943 sixteen-year-old Erik experiences the horrors of
war when he is drafted into the German army and sent to fight on the Russian front.
Slapp your Sides by M. E. Kerr (F Kerr) - Life in their Pennsylvania hometown changes for
Jubal Shoemaker and his family when his older brother witnesses to his Quaker beliefs by
becoming a conscientious objector during World War II.
House of the Red Fish (F Salisbury) - Over a year after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and the
arrest of Tomi's father and grandfather, Tomi and his friends, battling anti-Japanese-American
sentiment in Hawaii, try to find a way to salvage his father's sunken fishing boat.
Vietnam
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers (F Myers) - Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of
his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year
on active duty in Vietnam.
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (F O’Brien) - Contains a collection stories with
recurring characters, interwoven plot and themes told by a foot soldier retelling his experiences
in the Vietnam War.
Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien (F O’Brien) - An American soldier in Vietnam decides
to leave the war and simply walks out of the jungle, with the intent of going to Paris.
Iraq and Aftganistan
Sunrise over Fullajah (F Myers) - Robin Perry, from Harlem, is sent to Iraq in 2003 as a
member of the Civilian Affairs Battalion, and his time there profoundly changes him.
Purple Heart (F McCormack) - While recuperating in a Baghdad hospital from a traumatic brain
injury sustained during the Iraq War, eighteen-year-old soldier Matt Duffy struggles to recall
what happened to him and how it relates to his ten-year-old friend, Ali.
10
Shadows of Steel (F Brown) - When the newly nuclear capable Iran begins threatening the peace
in the Persian Gulf, the President of the United States, faced with a weakened military force,
calls upon Future Flight, a secret team of the CIA's Intelligence Support Agency, to try and avert
a catastrophe.