The Books Store

The year is 1879. Beautiful and headstrong orphan Aurelia Sandborn has no family to call her own. Fleeing from her sinister guardian, Aurelia finds herself in a Massachusetts village, where the townsfolk seem all too curious about her mysterious background. When Aurelia meets a charming boy named Wayland, she would like nto open her heart to him, but feels she cannot. Surprisingly she finds herself confiding the artist Winslow Homer, who is painting her portrait. And Homer himself may hold the key to the very truth about Aurelia's past...and future.

Dramatizing the very real plight of coal miners in the Pennsylvania anthracite fields in the 1870s, Rebels in the Shadows tells the story of the legendary secret society known as the Molly Maguires. The time is the explosive 1870s; the place, the hard-coal fields of Pennsylvania. The Flannery family, like all the others in Pottsville, barely eke out a living from the mines. Out of frustration and anger, a group of coal miners organizes a secret society to fight the coal mine operators. The mine owners strike back, resulting in atrocities on both sides.

In the midst of this upheaval, a charming stranger arrives in town. The newcomer, Red McKenna, quickly befriends fifteen-year-old Sean Flannery, and Sean’s sister, Kitty, falls in love with him. But when raids by the Mollies are ambushed by the Coal and Iron Police, Red is suspected of being a spy for the mine owners. The violence escalates, and the Flannery family is left to deal with the consequences of one of the first truly tragic labor conflicts in America.