Prairie Academy

It would seem incredible that a house fire in New York City could have ripples around the world. But stranger things have happened. This book launches the five-book Carlile Corners series set in middle America in the late 1800s, where one seventeen-year-old girl with an advantaged background has a sudden opportunity to show the stuff she's made of... on the frontier of Oklahoma Territory.

Josie Wheeler and her younger brother Josh are suddenly orphaned when their New York house goes up in flames. Having lived their whole lives in the city, they are suddenly forced to journey across the country to live with their nearest relatives in the just-settled Oklahoma Territory. Fighting snakes, wolf packs and other hazards of frontier living, Josie experiences and learns more than she ever would have thought.

Prairie Academy describes a time on the American frontier where where life wasn't to be taken for granted -- and one's family and community pulling together was the only means of survival.

The Carlile Corners series stretches from Conestoga wagons and foot-sore travelers to the birth of the tin lizzie. It grows from the bow and arrow to a tail gunner in a stick and canvass flying machine. From jackrabbit stew and venison to chow lines in Europe, and from the spinning wheel to machine-woven wool worsted. In short, it was no life for the weak minded, so come along and check it out... See how a group of Americans lived, loved and simply persevered to get through it all.