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Thirteen-year-old Zinnia Taylor uncovers family secrets and self truths while clearing a mysterious settler trail that begins on her family's farm in Kentucky.

Despite her impoverished background, Rebecca is an imaginative and charming child, often composing little poems and songs to express her feelings or to amuse her younger brothers and sisters. Rebecca's joy for life inspires her aunts, but she faces many trials in her young life, gaining wisdom and understanding. -- back cover.

Gr 3-5--As hard as it must be to write a sequel or prequel to one's own book, it must be doubly difficult to write a new story using someone else's creations, especially such well-known characters as the March girls. Pfeffer offers a slight story that takes place before Alcott's book; it's set when the girls are younger (Jo is 10), before the war and Pa's absence from home. The family members seem familiar, but the language of the story is simplified....

When her idyllic Sicilian retirement is interrupted by one of her unfaithful detective inspector husband's cases, the irascible Auntie Poldi uncovers shocking secrets in her effort to rescue an in-law from the Mafia.

When she joins Aunt Japonica and Aunt Thessalonika on a trip to America, nine-year-old Harriet meets yet another relative--Aunt Formica, a cowgirl who is having trouble with some clever and mysterious cattle rustlers.

Seventeen-year-old Pattyn, the eldest daughter in a large Mormon family, is sent to her aunt's Nevada ranch for the summer, where she temporarily escapes her alcoholic, abusive father and finds love and acceptance, only to lose everything when she returns home.