Under the Big Montana Sky

This book is a 2006 Cybil Award Nominee for YA Fiction.

New from Kirby Larson comes Hattie Here-And-There. That's how she thinks of herself, as just someone who fits in where she can. But Hattie Brooks, orphaned early and passed around to relatives almost since she can remember, really, really, really wants to be more than that. And, at sixteen, she is given the gift of home, from an uncle she's never met, to leave Iowa, and go to a place she's never been. And Hattie, seeing the chance to be someone new, someone grounded and rooted and land-owning, says yes to the Montana Big Sky country, and yes to proving up a claim that her Uncle left behind. No matter that she's young - she's determined, and she's worked twice as hard as girls twice her age. And neither snow nor sleet, influenza nor the Urban Defense League can change her mind.

The country is at war. Hattie knows she's not the only one suffering privations. As she ekes out a subsistence on the Montana soil, her letters to her pal Charlie overflow with descriptions of her battles with the landscape, but she is careful to keep from complaining. Her letters back to her Uncle Hal in Iowa gain her a loyal following an a little extra income from the newspaper, but is it enough? Will Hattie Here-and-There ever be Hattie Big Sky, and be able to keep what's been given to her, against all odds? And if she can't... will she ever have a home?