Uncertain Glory

Joe Wood has big dreams. He wants to be a newspaperman, and though he’s only thirteen, he’s already borrowed money for the equipment to start his own press. But it’s April 1861, and the young nation is teetering on the brink of a civil war. He has to help Owen, his young assistant, deal with the challenges of being black in a white world torn apart by color. He needs to talk his best friend, Charlie, out of enlisting. He wants to help a young spiritualist, Nell, whose uncle claims can she speak to the dead. And when Owen disappears, it’s up to Joe to save him. Lea Wait skillfully draws on the lives of real people in Maine’s history to tell this story of three young adults touched by war and the tensions it brings, forcing them into adulthood before they may be ready.

Lea Wait is the author of four acclaimed historical novels for children aged 7 and up set in nineteenth-century Maine. Her books include Stopping to Home, Seaward Born, Wintering Well, and Finest Kind. She also writes the New York Times-praised six-book Shadows Antique Print Mystery series, traditional mysteries featuring antique print dealer and community college professor Maggie Summer, the most recent of which is Shadows on a Cape Cod Wedding. She grew up in New Jersey and Maine, and has an undergraduate degree from Chatham College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and an MA and DWD from New York University. She worked for AT&T in New York and New Jersey while she was raising her four daughters, whom she adopted as a single parent. She now writes full time, is married to artist Bob Thomas, and blogs at http://www.mainecrimewriters.com with nine other Maine mystery writers. She invites you to check her website, www.leawait.com, and to friend her on Facebook.