While sixteen-year-old Miles Halter's first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes plenty of good friends and great pranks, most of his time is defined by his encounter with a girl named Alaska and by his search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash.

"Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern are off to Alabama to visit their grandmother, Big Ma, and her mother, Ma Charles. Across the way lives Ma Charles's half sister, Miss Trotter. The two half sisters haven't spoken in years. As Delphine hears about her family history, she uncovers the surprising truth that's been keeping the sisters apart. But when tragedy strikes, Delphine discovers that the bonds of family run deeper than she ever knew possible" --

After the death of his father, ten-year-old Moon leaves their forest shelter home and is sent to an Alabama institution, becoming entangled in the outside world he has never known and making good friends, a relentless enemy, and finally a new life.

Twenty years after the trial of Tom Robinson, Jean Louise Finch--Scout--returns home to Maycomb to visit her father. She struggles with personal and political issues as her small Alabama town adjusts to the turbulent events beginning to transform the United States in the mid-1950s.

Lomasi, a Creek girl, enjoys singing and hearing stories from the village storyteller, and also likes to help her grandmother gather leaves, roots, and herbs for medicine, but one day her grandmother has an accident and Lomasi must decide what to do.

"When two Depression-era migrant workers, Paul and Vern, find an abandoned baby in the woods, they take it upon themselves to care for the mysterious child. When fifteen-year-old Marigold, reviled by her family after an unwanted pregnancy, loses her baby in the forest, her whole world is painted black. She's still fraught with despair when she discovers what seems to be a miraculous power within her. Coot, a child preacher on the Kansas plains, escapes...

The jailhouse lawyer: A young lawyer takes on the judge who is destroying her hometown--and ends up in jail herself. In picture-perfect Erva, Alabama, the most serious crimes are misdemeanors. Speeding tickets. Shoplifting. Contempt of court. Then why is the jail so crowded? And why are so few prisoners released? There's only one place to learn the truth behind these incriminating secrets. Sometimes the best education a lawyer can get is a short stretch...

Inspired by the author's childhood experience as a refugee-fleeing Vietnam after the fall of Saigon and immigrating to Alabama-this coming-of-age debut told in verse has been celebrated for its touching child's-eye view of family and immigration.