New York City. Evie Brooks had seen it on the TV, but suddenly finds herself leaving her home in Dublin and moving to Manhattan to her American uncle Scott, after the death of her mother. Never owned a pet more substantial than a goldfish, Evie is intrigued by Scott's NYC veterinary practice, and before long, Evie is working as an assistant in the clinic. Between the pets, their owners, Scott and his lawyer girlfriend, the Summer quickly becomes a whirlwind of change and activity! And then Evie has to make a huge choice: will she stay in New York, or return to live in Ireland with her godmother, Janet?

Long ago the dam formed, the lively river turned into a swamp, and the wasting illness came to Luna's village, and now that her little sister is sick Luna will do anything to save her, even offer herself to the creature that lives in the swamp on the day of the nearer moon--a lonely and bitter water sprite who was left behind when her people fled through a door to another world.

In this remarkable book, Graham Hodges presents a comprehensive history of African Americans in New York City and its rural environs from the arrival of the first African--a sailor marooned on Manhattan Island in 1613--to the bloody Draft Riots of 1863. Throughout, he explores the intertwined themes of freedom and servitude, city and countryside, and work, religion, and resistance that shaped black life in the region through two and a half centuries. Hodges chronicles the lives of the first free black settlers in the Dutch-ruled city, the gradual slide into enslavement after the British takeover, the fierce era of slavery, and the painfully slow process of emancipation. He pays particular attention to the black religious experience in all its complexity and to the vibrant slave culture that was shaped on the streets and in the taverns. Together, Hodges shows, these two potent forces helped fuel the long and arduous pilgrimage to liberty.