Like most everybody else in the middle of the Great Depression, sixteen-year-old Liberty Justice Jones is, well, stuck. But living smack-dab in the Lost Pines of Texas, where anyone can walk into the forest and chop a tree for free, with a debt-burdened mom who's trying to make a go of a newfangled idea called a Christmas tree farm? That's stuck bad.

Especially if your dream is college. Liberty's younger brother, Jefferson, is no help, and neither is their addled grandmother. Liberty's only hope is her own wits. But if she's so smart, she wonders, why can't she figure out a way to help their family and get off this wreck of a farm?

Learning of the five-hundred-dollar prize for the most beautiful Christmas tree delivered to the state capitol in Austin, Liberty hatches a plot. With the aid of their aging draft horse, Quiller; their derelict tractor, Stella; and Rudy, a kid pulled between America and Mexico and fresh off the rails, she's determined to take home the honours.

With the sparkling dialogue and spunky humour that fans have come to love in her heroines, and a perceptive eye and ear for historical detail, award-winning author Randall Platt takes readers young and old on a spirited adventure set in a time when dreams were all many folks had.

 

This book was recognised by the Willa Literary Award.

There are 224 pages in this book. This book was published 2012 by Texas Tech Press, U. S. .

Randall Platt writes fiction for adults and young adults and those who don t own up to being either. A lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest, she is the author of the Fe-As-Ko series of humorous westerns for adults as well as award-winning novels for younger readers. She lives outside Seattle, Washington. "