Kate's Ring

An industrial town where smoke laden with reddish-orange dust from the steel plant darkens the sky. A place where it's not easy to raise a family, especially one with its fair share of problems. But thirteen-year-old Kate takes on the responsibility and tries to keep her embattled family going. And it's Kate, in the end, who thinks she can get her parents, her brothers and sisters through heartbreak and tragedy.

Set in a hardscrabble East Coast town in the 1920's, Donna Grassby's novel paints a vivid portrait of people in crisis, exploring issues as relevant today as they were then. The resolution leans as much on hope as it does on family.