Books like Rachel by Lynne Kositsky

During World War II, a foster girl in Nazi Germany steals books to share with neighbors and a hidden Jewish man, proving literature’s power to nourish the soul amid darkness.

In 1943 Copenhagen, ten‑year‑old Annemarie Johansen helps her Jewish friend Ellen Rosen escape Nazi persecution, learning courage and resilience while navigating war‑time hardships.

A 1930s wartime tale of a blind French girl and a German boy whose lives intersect in occupied France, weaving themes of survival, friendship, and the moral choices people make amid World War II.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic expose the brutal reality of American slavery, following the devout slave Tom as he faces injustice and moral dilemmas—an influential work that stirred Northern anti‑slavery sentiment before the Civil War.

In 1941 Lithuania, fifteen‑year‑old Lina and her family are deported by the Soviets to a Siberian labor camp; through art and resilience they endure brutal conditions and strive to survive the long journey ahead.

Follow Aminata Diallo, a child sold into slavery in South Carolina, as she escapes to Canada after the Revolutionary War and seeks a new life of freedom.

Young American pilot Rose Justice is captured by Nazis and sent to Ravensbrück, a notorious women’s concentration camp. In that brutal setting, she discovers hope through the loyalty, bravery, and friendship of her fellow prisoners.

In the summer of 1904, shy, stuttering Fred spends time at his grandparents' Ontario cottage, where he experiences his first love, solves a mystery, and takes his first steps toward adulthood.

Upon their father's return, the five Dunbar boys, who have raised themselves since their mother's death, begin to learn family secrets, including that of fourth brother Clay, who will build a bridge for complex reasons, including his own redemption.

During the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam, 17‑year‑old Hanneke secretly trades black market goods while grieving her boyfriend’s death and shielding her parents from the harsh reality of wartime life.

Rachel Webber’s unexpected pregnancy brings joy amid the unraveling of her family’s bonds. Faith guides her as she strives to restore hope for her husband, son, and herself.

THE YANKEE Rachel Irons is widowed, pregnant, and has many acres of crops to plant, but she is determined to save her Delaware farm, Rachel's Choice Plantation. When fate sends her an extra pair of hands in the form of a handsome rebel soldier, she's willing to risk the danger of harboring the enemy. And William Chancellor is willing to work her fields in return for her silence. But it will take every ounce of Rachel's tenacity to remember that this gentlemanly man with the warm-honey Virginia drawl is the enemy—and her heart loses the battle as soon as it begins. THE CONFEDERATE Though this man she calls Chance finds himself both moved and aroused by Rachel's strength and simple beauty, his honor demands that he uphold a blood vow he made long before he ever set eyes on her. But Rachel is a fighter, too, and giving up Chance is a surrender she vows never to make—even as his presence puts her own life in peril. . . . Set just after the Civil War, this is a classic historical romance by a beloved name in women's fiction, Judith E. French.

In 1874 Montana, new teacher Rachel English battles frontier school challenges and unexpected love with bar owner Trey Hargreaves, a part‑Lakota widower, as Springwater grows from a stagecoach stop to a bustling town.

"Bondspeople who fled from slavery during and after the Civil War did not expect that their flight toward freedom would lead to sickness, disease, suffering, and death. But the war produced the largest biological crisis of the nineteenth century, and as historian Jim Downs reveals in this groundbreaking volume, it had deadly consequences for hundreds of thousands of freed people. In Sick from Freedom, Downs recovers the untold story of one of the bitterest ironies in American history--that the emancipation of the slaves, seen as one of the great turning points in U.S. history, had devastating consequences for innumerable freedpeople. Drawing on massive new research into the records of the Medical Division of the Freedmen's Bureau-a nascent national health system that cared for more than one million freed slaves-he shows how the collapse of the plantation economy released a plague of lethal diseases. With emancipation, African Americans seized the chance to move, migrating as never before. But in their journey to freedom, they also encountered yellow fever, smallpox, cholera, dysentery, malnutrition, and exposure. To address this crisis, the Medical Division hired more than 120 physicians, establishing some forty underfinanced and understaffed hospitals scattered throughout the South, largely in response to medical emergencies. Downs shows that the goal of the Medical Division was to promote a healthy workforce, an aim which often excluded a wide range of freedpeople, including women, the elderly, the physically disabled, and children. Downs concludes by tracing how the Reconstruction policy was then implemented in the American West, where it was disastrously applied to Native Americans. The widespread medical calamity sparked by emancipation is an overlooked episode of the Civil War and its aftermath, poignantly revealed in Sick from Freedom"-- "Sick from Freedom provides the first study of the health conditions of emancipated slaves and reveals the epidemics, illnesses, and poverty that former slaves suffered from when slavery ended and freedom began"--

In *Juneteenth for Mazie*, a young girl learns that true freedom means more than staying up late; her father shares the historic celebration of Juneteenth and the legacy of her ancestors in Texas.