Norma Jean Lutz Classic Collection

The strangest thing about the nightmares was that Serena never knew the screams were hers until Aunt Loula woke her. In her dream, the screams were always Kris's. Always Kris's. Aunt Loula's husky voice would croon as she patted Serena, "There, there. It's all right. It's all a dream. Go back to sleep now." But it was never all right. And she almost never went back to sleep, for fear it would come again... The accident that injured her seven-year-old brother, Kris, was all Serena's fault. Her mother and Kris are in Texas at a rehabilitation center, and Serena has been exiled to her farmer relatives in Oklahoma. Serena misses the accelerated school she attended in Minneapolis. She misses her family, and she misses her best friend, Brent. Through the hot Oklahoma summer, Serena struggles with a heavy load of guilt. By mid-summer when her mother and Kris come for a visit, the sight of Kris in a wheel chair is almost more than Serena can bear. Open friendship is offered to Serena by her extended family, by a stray dog named Rompers, and by a young man named Vince-who seems to know a lot about dogs, and about wounded hearts. What will it take for Serena to emerge from the morass of guilt and self-pity so she can truly see the sterling friends with whom she's been surrounded during her Oklahoma exile?

Latina Harmen knew she was going to hate Missouri. "There's nothing in Missouri!" she had told her father when he announced they were to spend the summer there.And now she knew she had been one hundred and ten percent right. Latina had taken for granted that she would be spending another happy summer vacation with her friends at Periwinkle Cove on the East Coast. After all, her family had spent summers there as long as she could remember. Now, in the summer before her senior year, she would be stuck in a hick town with no one around but her boring parents and bratty younger brother. How could she have guessed the beauty that lay waiting for her in those brooding hills? How was she to know she would meet fascinating people, and that she would learn more about herself than she'd ever known? How was she to know she would meet a special someone whose friendship and support would change her life forever?