Upbeat Historical Family Dramas with a Touch of Romance

Try these books if you're looking for:

• Historical titles
• Family stories
• A little bit of romance

Papa Married a Mormon
By John D. Fitzgerald
BIO Fitzgerald
An autobiography by the creator of “The Great Brain” children’s series. Mr. Fitzgerald tells about the old "wild west" and the people who made America the strong nation that it is today. A Catholic man falls in love with a Mormon woman and they raise their family in Utah in the late 1860s. This short but engaging book includes gunfights, saloon kings, as well as faithful reverends, charitable women, and people whose lives changed for the better.

Peace like a River
By Leif Enger
F Enger
The quiet 1960s Midwestern life of the Land family--father Jeremiah, and children, Reuben, Davy and Swede--is upended when Davy kills two teenage boys who have come to harm the family. On the morning of his sentencing, Davy escapes from his cell and the Lands set out in search of him. Their search is at once a heroic quest, a tragedy, a love story, and a haunting meditation on the possibility of magic in the everyday world.

Mr. Darcy’s Daughters
By Elizabeth Aston
F Aston
One of the best Pride and Prejudice ‘sequels’, this story picks up in 1818, twenty years after Elizabeth and Darcy fall in love. They have gone to Constantinople, giving us an opportunity to get to know their five daughters, who have left the sheltered surroundings of Pemberley for a few months in London. While the eldest, Letitia, frets and the youngest, Alethea, practices her music, twins Georgina and Belle flirt and frolic their way through parties and balls and Camilla -- levelheaded and independent -- discovers what joys and sorrows the city has to offer an intelligent young woman.

The Blue Castle
By L. M. Montgomery
YA F Montgome
At twenty-nine Valancy had never been in love, and it seemed romance had passed her by. Living with her overbearing mother and meddlesome aunt, she found her only consolations in the "forbidden" books of John Foster and her daydreams of the Blue Castle. Then a letter arrived from Dr. Trent -- and Valancy decided to throw caution to the winds. For the first time in her life Valancy did and said exactly what she wanted. Soon she discovered a surprising new world, full of love and adventures far beyond her most secret dreams.

The Book Thief
By Markus Zusak
F Zusak
Set during World War II in Germany, this is the story of Liesel, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau. This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul.