The River Between Us » (Reprint)

Richard Peck has won almost every children's fiction award, including the Newbery Medal, and he has recently received a National Humanities Medal from the White House.

During the early days of the Civil War, the Pruitt family takes in two mysterious young ladies who have fled New Orleans to come north to Illinois.

The Washington Post

This unusual Civil War novel really boosts Peck's credentials as America's best living author for young adults. Not only is it a gripping yarn -- about two enigmatic women and a small Southern Illinois town in the momentous first year of the war -- but it is nearly as intricately structured as Wuthering Heights, with multiple narrators and tales-within-tales enhancing both the mystery and the wistfulness of long-ago events. — Elizabeth Ward