On The Road With Ruben Doyle: and Two More

An orphan train headed west launches a boy into dangerous territory and a hard education in survival, leading finally to the ranch of a legendary mountain man and a mining war in southern Colorado. An isolated village on a frontier in the Balkans harbors omens and restless spirits. A daring girl steals a captive frog from a traveling fair and braves a haunted gorge to set him free. She soon makes a startling discovery. A peasant farmer in southern China suffers the tyranny of bandits, Manchu soldiers, and a greedy landlord. As if to compensate, Fate has given his daughter an extraordinary head of hair and placed in his path a young man wracked with fever and left behind by a caravan. What can come of this? The perils in store for his daughter lead finally to a dramatic climax across the Pacific in Gold Mountain. Three rousing stories of compelling young heroes from other times, other places. What can be better than that?