Living Fire: Zeb Finley and the Hornswoggled Thief

Twelve-year-old Zeb Finley, a New York street urchin, is half dare-devil and half day-dreamer. He's the last boy off the Orphan Train deep into the Midwestern prairie, sweating in his itchy new clothes when he meets the lonely young widow, Idella Spurlock, waiting at the train stop. She's alone, he's alone, and so the two trudge off together. Neither imagines what will soon season their lives, including a train robber named Tucker, a stash of booty from Tucker's heist, an encounter with a grey wolf, and swarming grasshoppers that darken the sun, level crops, stop trains in their tracks, and chomp wool off the shirts on their backs. And then there's the murderous Bender family. Kate Bender promises, "Cross my palm with coin, and I'll reach your pa in the World Beyond." Can she, or is she a total fake? Zeb hankers to hop on a train back to New York where life was free and simple-except for freezing, starving, and sleeping in muddy gutters. But maybe he'll make his peace with Idella, with a prairie girl named Lucy who teaches him how to shoot a cottontail, with Osage Indians, and with the lovable scoundrel, Tucker. Or maybe not. Before Zeb nearly loses himself on the vast Kansas prairie, he must find his heroic self in the story he's secretly writing about Montague Mortis, and the Hornswoggled Horse Thief. Living Fire is a rollicking novel with humor and heart, in harmony with the Kansas motto, "To the stars through difficulties."

About the Author :
As an only-child growing up in San Francisco, Lois Ruby had her nose deep in a book all the time, even crossing the city streets to and from the library. Her B.A. is in English literature from the University of California/Berkeley, and her M.A. is in library science. In her varied career, she has been a waitress, statistical typist, office manager, religious school director, art and music librarian at the University of Missouri, and YA librarian in the Dallas Public Library. When she started having babies at an alarming rate (three sons in four years), she was happy to be able to stay home and do sweet battle with them as infants and toddlers, while writing an hour a day during Sesame Street. Those boys survived her mothering and turned out well, so now she's a full-time writer, dividing her hours among traveling, researching, writing, teaching, and visiting schools to talk about books and the joy of reading. When kids ask if she's ever going to retire, she says NO! In fact, she tells them that when she's dead and buried, her arm will shoot out of the grave with a pen in her hand, and she'll keep writing in the air. Lois and her extraordinary husband, Dr. Tom Ruby, lived in Texas, Missouri, New Mexico, and especially enjoyed many wonderful years in Kansas. Ohio is now their home where Tom patiently tolerates Lois's crazy obsession with writing.