Bad Man Ballad

Two historical novels by Hoosier authors make their re-entry on the scene. The Bad Man Ballad by Scott Russell Sanders, originally published by Bradbury Press in 1986, begins with the discovery of a murdered dwarf in 1813 in the Ohio Valley, and becomes a quest for a lawyer and a teenage boy to find the ""giant"" responsible, in this unflinching portrait of mob mentality and fear of the ""other."" In The Dark Didn't Catch Me by Crystal Thrasher, first published by Atheneum in 1975, a family tries to pull together during the Depression in rural Indiana as 11-year-old Seely describes her schooling, her abusive father and other challenges. .