Liberty's Christmas — Randall Platt

Like most everybody else in the middle of the Great Depression, fifteen-year-old Liberty Justice Jones is, well, stuck. But living smack-dab in the Lost Pines of Texas, where any fool can walk into the forest and chop a tree for free, with a debt-burdened mom who's trying to make a go of this newfangled idea of a Christmas tree farm -- that's stuck bad. Especially if your dream is college.Liberty's younger brother, Jefferson, is no help, and neither is their addled grandmother. Liberty's only hope is her own wits. But if she's so smart, she wonders, why can't she figure out a way to help their family and get off this wreck of a farm?Learning of the five-hundred-dollar prize for the most beautiful Christmas tree delivered to the state capitol, Liberty hatches a plot. With the aid of their aging draft horse, Quiller, their derelict tractor, Stella, and Rudy, a kid pulled between America and Mexico and fresh off the rails, she's determined to move a twenty-five-foot tree all the way to Austin in the snow and ice -- without getting caught.With the sparkling dialogue and spunky humor that fans have come to love in her heroines, and a perceptive eye and ear for historical detail, award-winning author Randall Platt takes readers young and old on a spirited adventure set in a time when dreams were all many folks had.