Lyddie
Katherine Paterson
 The novel begins as Lyddie and her family are in her house, and a black bear enters through the open door. Lyddie's mother sees this as the end of the world but, it wasn't the bear left with no one harmed. Lyddie's father left for the gold rush, and no one knows if he will return. Lyddie's mother leaves Lyddie and her brother Charles (aka Charlie) to work on the farm. Lyddie is sent to work at a tavern as a housemaid, and Charlie is sent to work at the Baker's mill. At the inn Lyddie is treated almost as a slave. She goes home once during the winter, where she meets a runaway slave. Before she leaves, she lends him the money she and Charlie received for a calf they sold. When she returns to the inn she is fired. Lyddie then works at a textile mill, to earn enough to pay the debt on her family's farm. At the mill, she is taken under the wing by a woman who is involved in the struggle for better conditions at the mill. Although she struggles at first, Lyddie is soon considered the best girl on the floor by her supervisor. In a letter, Charlie tells her how he likes it at the Baker's mill, and how he is considered part of the family, as well as how he is allowed to go to school when work is slack. She receives word that her baby sister has died, and that her mother had been sent to an asylum, where she later dies. Her uncle brings Lyddie's other sister to the boarding house, and she works there at the mill with Lyddie for a while, but is then sent to live with Charlie at the Baker's mill. Luke Stevens proposes to Lyddie, and she refuses. Luke also sent a letter from Ezekial Abernanthy, the slave she met at her house, paying back the money she lent him. Her Uncle eventually sells the farm and she is left with nothing but a chance for college Lyddie decides to sign a petition for better working conditions. When she is let go from the company for 'moral turpitude' (actually, she was only fired because she caught Mr. Marsden trying to rape another worker after hours and Mr.Marsden knew she would've alerted others, causing him to lose his job), she writes a letter to her supervisor, Mr. Marsden. She returns home briefly. Lyddie plans to marry, but chooses instead to go to a college known for accepting women as well as men. Though the novel ends there, Lyddie later appears in Paterson's Jip: His Story.