Dixie Martin, the Girl of Woodford's Cañon

Dixie Martin is twelve years old, and she has been running a household since before she should have had to. After her parents died, she inherited three younger siblings and a claim to "the bluest blood in the whole South" that means nothing in a Sierra Nevada log cabin. She's up before dawn, calling Carolina out of bed for the sixteenth time, wrestling Jimmy-Boy into his Sunday clothes, making sure the new teacher doesn't think them shiftless. The new teacher is arriving at the little school at Woodford's Cañon, and for Dixie this represents possibility, a way out for her siblings. But someone has to stay and cook and clean and hold things together. Grace May North captures the particular weight of a child forced to be a parent: the exhaustion beneath the bossiness, the fierce love behind the orders. This is a story about duty and dreams, about what children sacrifice when the world leaves them no choice, and about the unlikely dignity of a skinny, freckled girl with red hair and a mountain to climb.