CABBY POTTS, DUCHESS OF DIRT

Cabby’s family are homesteaders in Kansas; fires and grasshoppers destroy their crops, but Cabby is determined to continue farming.

Twelve-year-old Catherine “Cabby” Potts isn’t aware that her parents may lose their claim until they force her to go work in Lady Ashford’s prairie manor. With no crops to sell, the family needs her wages. Independent-minded Cabby hates servitude and resents the classism of snooty Londoner Lady Ashford and her youngest son, Nigel. But that doesn’t stop her from matchmaking her sister, Emmeline, with Nigel, thinking the marriage will solve the family’s financial woes. To Cabby’s shock, although Nigel initially seemed interested in Emmeline, he in fact looks down on her. Cabby also discovers that Nigel and his associates are tricking her family and other homesteaders out of land they claimed for themselves. This storyline is juxtaposed with Cabby’s growing understanding of how these families acquired their land at the cost of Kiowa, Cheyenne, Kansa, and Wichita people. She becomes aware of the way her White neighbors disdain the town’s remaining Kiowa residents. With each episodic adventure narrated in Cabby’s first-person voice, Cabby earns the grudging respect of Lady Ashford and the trust of her Kiowa and White friend, Eli Lewis, a boy who works as the Ashfords’ groom. Throughout, she questions the nature of love and partnership, and, with new self-confidence, she ultimately exposes the fraudsters. Despite life’s uncertainties, one thing is clear: Cabby will determine her own path.

A rousing read.