Charlotte Miller has always scoffed at talk of a curse on her family’s woolen mill, which holds her beloved small town together. But after her father’s death, the bad luck piles up: departing workers, impossible debts, an overbearing uncle. Then a stranger named Jack Spinner offers a tempting proposition: He can turn straw into gold thread, for the small price of her mother’s ring. As Charlotte is drawn deeper into her bargains with Spinner-and a romance with the local banker-she must unravel the truth of the curse on the mill and save the community she’s always called home.
The mills at Wicksbridge are imaginary, but their planning, construction, and operation are quite typical of mills developed in New England throughout the nineteenth century.
Amanda Videau had no idea what adventures she’d find on the journey North. But she never expected thisÂ… After witnessing a crime, she goes into hiding, disguising herself as a worker in her great-grandfather’s textile mill. For the first time in her life, Amanda must work to survive. And that means experiencing the horrible working conditions of the mill firsthand.
During the closing days of the Civil War, plucky 12-year-old Hannalee Reed, sent north to work in a Yankee mill, struggles to return to the family she left behind in war-torn Georgia. “A fast-moving novel based upon an actual historical incident with a spunky heroine and fine historical detail.”–School Library Journal.
A story of an orphan girl, separated from her siblings, and her struggle to earn enough money to reunite them, along with her struggle for better working conditions in the Lowell, Mass. mills.
When her spendthrift father goes into debt after buying a sheep and the inner workings of a clock, fifteen-year-old Annie Steele is sent to work in the town’s new wool mill to help support her family. Her job is full of risk — especially after she and her friend Robert discover that the mill’s cruel overseer is stealing bags of wool and decide to do something about it.
