Lizzie and her twin, Annie, are only five in 1928, when their Bohemian immigrant mother, their matka, dies of a stroke at age 39 after giving birth to ten children. Their papa, Dmitri, leaves Lizzie and Annie, along with two older siblings at the Hessoun Orphanage, the "Home" run by strict Czech nuns and dedicated to educating and bringing up Bohemian children to their "stations" in life. Although identical twins, Lizzie and Annie are opposites in terms of temperament and behavior. Annie is the saintly sister who believes that her Guardian Angel protects her; Lizzie is the mischievous twin who frequently gets reprimanded and punished by the Mother Superior, Sister Gustava. Lizzie questions everything and wants more than what "fate" intends for an Eastern European immigrant child. She wants to be a doctor, an aviator, or an athlete but her biggest and most immediate goal is to find a way for her and Annie to escape from the Home and return to their papa's house, because the Home is far from being a true home. ORPHAN ANNIE'S SISTER, based on the author's mother and her twin's lives, follows Lizzie's life when she is ten during one year of the Depression, while interweaving local, national, and international news. Written as a journal addressed to her matka, her mother, this historical fiction novel reflects Lizzie's struggles to be an obedient child, as she comes to terms with what home means when you have no mother and your father has "orphaned" you. Lizzie wants far more than what "fate" has allotted her and she questions much of what she's been taught in her religious and ethnic upbringing. As she writes to her mother, she insists that she is an American, not a Bohemian child, and she discovers that she resembles the "freethinkers" in Bohemia who rebelled and broke away from the Catholic Church. Pre-teen readers of historical fiction will love ORPHAN ANNIE'S SISTER

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