Upside Down in a Laura Ingalls Town

By Leslie Tall Manning

Book Overview

It has been a long and difficult year for the Decker family, especially for sixteen-year-old Brooke. Her grades have plummeted. She deliberately breaks curfew. She makes out with boys she hardly knows. And now her father has totally lost it. When Tim Decker signs up his family of three to be contestants on a Hollywood reality show, Brooke's life turns upside down. The place: The North Carolina backcountry. The year: 1861. Brooke is forced to trade in her Victoria's Secret bra for a rib-cracking corset, her comfy jeans for an ugly farm dress, and her private bathroom for an outhouse. Television cameras will follow her every move as she lives the grueling life of a mid-nineteenth-century farm girl: milking a cow, churning butter, fetching water countless times a day, and riding in a horse-drawn wagon along a rutted road to spend pennies in town. This will be Brooke's life for four awful months. Unless, of course, she breaks the rules and the producers kick her off the show...Other families are scattered throughout Sweet Sugar Gap. The snotty Prudence Miller soon becomes Brooke's rival. Wendell Murphy, who works at the local mercantile, is instantly smitten with Brooke-but also makes her suspicious. Does the only cute boy in town really like her, or is he merely showing off for the cameras?Brooke Decker may just have to find a way to make it in the backcountry, leaving behind the modern frills she can't live without. But can a young girl's wishful heart surrender to a time and place she believes she can never call home?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0996130659
• ISBN13: 9780996130653
• Release Date: January 2016
• Publisher: Leslie Tall Manning
• Length: 366 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 14 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 9 to 12

Customer Reviews

YA Retelling

This is a Young Adult Retelling Kindof. I have to say I love the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, so I had to read this book when I ran across it. I just finish reading this book, and it was nothing like what I was thinking it would be. It was so much better then I thought it would be. I loved it. There was so many times while I was reading this book I ask myself could I do that. I think if you loved the Little House on the Prairie then you will love this book. I loved Brooke, and the characters was so developed in this book. I loved the storyline in this story. There was twists and turns in this book that I did not see coming. This was a great book not just a good book. This book is about a teenager and her family being thrown into a 1860's town like the Little House on the Prairie. I received an ARC of this book. This review is my own honest opinion about the book like all my reviews are.