The Devil's Paintbox |
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Author:
| McKernan, Victoria |
ISBN: | 978-0-449-81655-4 |
Publication Date: | Nov 2013 |
Publisher: | Random House Children's Books
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Imprint: | Ember |
Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $9.99 |
Book Description:
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When almost-16-year-old Aiden Lynch and his little sister, Maddy, first meet trailrider Jefferson J. Jackson, they're eating clay and hunting grasshoppers on the remains of their family's drought-ravaged Kansas farm. In short, the two orphans are starving to death, so when this man Jackson offers an escape--a 2000-mile journey across the roughest country in the world--Aiden knows it's their only choice. They say there are a hundred ways to die on the Oregon Trail, and the...
More DescriptionWhen almost-16-year-old Aiden Lynch and his little sister, Maddy, first meet trailrider Jefferson J. Jackson, they're eating clay and hunting grasshoppers on the remains of their family's drought-ravaged Kansas farm. In short, the two orphans are starving to death, so when this man Jackson offers an escape--a 2000-mile journey across the roughest country in the world--Aiden knows it's their only choice.
They say there are a hundred ways to die on the Oregon Trail, and the long wagon journey is broken only by catastrophe: wolf attacks, tornadoes, rattlesnakes, deadly river crossings, Indians, and the looming threat of smallpox, "the devil's paint." But with the sky a cornflower blue and the air sweet with new prairie grass, Aiden and Maddy and a hundred fellow travelers move forward with a growing hope, and the promise of a new life in the Washington Territory.
Adventure-filled and historically accurate, Victoria McKernan captures both the peril and stunning beauty of the frontier West in an epic American story at once sweeping and intimate, heartbreaking and hopeful.