"Louisiana, 1875: In the tumultuous aftermath of Reconstruction, three young women set off as unwilling companions on a perilous quest: Lavinia, the pampered heir to a now-destitute plantation; Juneau Jane, her illegitimate free-born Creole half-sister; and Hannie, Lavinia's former slave. Each carries private wounds and powerful secrets as they head for Texas, following dangerous roads rife with ruthless vigilantes and soldiers still fighting a war...

To discover how others exist on minimum wage, the author leaves her home, takes the cheapest lodgings she can find, and accepts whatever jobs she's offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she works variously as a waitress, nursing home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She learned many things, including the fact that one job is not enough: you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.

Bone, an illegitimate child in a family of social outcasts, sees her mother's happiness with her new husband and will not tell when the stepfather begins abusing her in the 1950s.

From age six through her high school valedictory speech, believing she and her mother are wizards helps young Echo cope with poverty, hunger, her mother's drug abuse, and much more. Echo Brown is a wizard from the East Side of Cleveland, where apartments are small and parents suffer addiction to the white rocks. Yet there is magic everywhere. Every day Echo travels between worlds, attending a rich white school on the West Side. But there are dangers...

In medieval England, a nameless, homeless girl is taken in by a sharp-tempered midwife, and in spite of obstacles and hardship, eventually gains the three things she most wants: a full belly, a contented heart, and a place in this world.

In 1945, in Florida, ten-year-old Birdie Boyer and her family struggle to make their new farm prosper despite heat, droughts, cold snaps, and rowdy neighbors.

Profiles three young girls and their families living in poverty in the Quad Cities of Illinois and Iowa, a part of the U.S. hard hit by the economic downturn that began in the late '00s.

No one wants to live in poverty. Few people would want others to do so. Yet, we find ourselves in a situation where millions of people worldwide live in poverty. Indeed, according to the World Bank in 2010, 1.2 billion people lived below the extreme poverty line with an income of US $1.25 or less a day and 2.4 billion lived on less than US $2 a day. Why is that? What has been done about it in the past? And what is being done about it now? In this...

"Anthology of diverse viewpoints exploring stagnating wages in the United States and how an increase to the federal minimum wage would affect workers and the economy"--

The collection of pro and con articles debates the causes of and solutions to poverty in America.