The Unexpected Lives of Ordinary Girls

By: J. Anderson Coats

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Synopsis: A child of immigrants feels caught between two worlds and two selves in this powerful, luminous middle grade historical novel about self-determination, community, and what it means to belong—perfect for fans of Esperanza Rising and Katherine Marsh&’s The Lost Year.When your family comes from Eastern Europe, you get used to being called a Bohunk—someone who&’s ignorant, lazy, and still has Old World farm dirt in their ears. Someone from a place that people don&’t care enough about to learn its real name. Stanislava feels stuck in her deeply traditional Slovene community in Colorado in 1910. But when she finds a library book about an immigrant girl&’s college adventure, she discovers a dazzling world of opportunity. She&’s desperate to be like the book&’s heroine, Katinka, who starts life anew as Katie and is seemingly living the American dream. So, like Katie, Stanislava adopts an &“American&” name: Sylvia. Sylvia fantasizes about escaping her claustrophobic life and going off to college—until her dreams are shattered when her older sister, Stina, elopes with a man their family disapproves of. Now Sylvia finds herself at a crossroads: quit school to fill Stina&’s role as the family&’s caretaker or run away from home. Stanislava would do the former. But Sylvia is determined to be free…