Sarah McCoy Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Sarah McCoy is American literature and historical fiction author born in Fort Knox, Kentuck. She is a USA Today, New York Times, and internationally bestselling writer of multiple novels. She has been a writing teacher at Old Dominion University and the University of Texas at El Paso.

Sarah is the daughter of an army officer, and she grew up in Germany, where her family was stationed at the time. Her novel, The Baker’s Daughter, was a Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for the Best Historical Fiction of 2012. It was also a Double/Literary Guild Book Club selection.

The Baker’s Daughter
The story is split between past and present Nazi Germany in the final year of World War II and the present in El Paso, Texas.

It’s about two different women and how they find themselves. Elsie Schmidt is 16 and the second daughter of bakers in Garmisch, Germany. She’s living with her parents while in Garmisch in her parent’s bakery.
Her elder sister, Hazel, has been taken to the Lebensborn program to reproduce racially pure and strong babies for the fatherland after her fiancé was murdered.

Julius, their young son, is being educated in Nazi dogma. The Schmidts have been supporting Hitler and his policies. When Lt. colonel Josef Hub, a family friend since the death of Peter, invites Elsie to the Nazi’s Weihnachten party, they are fascinated. All they do is try to get along with others within the community.

At the party, Joseph asks Elsie to marry him and gives her a ring that has a Hebrew in it. Elsie has no idea of what to do as, on the one hand, he offers the bakery with supplies and family protection. The only problem is that he is much older and she isn’t willing to marry him.

At the party, a young Jewish boy with a unique and beautiful voice is called in to sing for the guests. Elsie learns he will be killed as soon as he is taken back to the concentration camp he earlier in. When a general Kremer attacks Elsie in an alley, she runs to breathe some air; the boy’s voice saves her.

Later in the night, their lives turn different when the boy comes through the bakery’s back door. His entire life changes on Christmas eve of 1944 after she takes in a young Jewish boy who escaped his guard.
She hides him in her bedroom, and they become friends as she risks everything to ensure the boy is safe. Years later, in 2007, a journalist known as Reba Adams tried to get in touch with the now-aged Elsie Schmidt while working on an article on Christmas traditions worldwide.

She is looking forward to discussing German traditions with Elsie. However, the interview turns out to be entirely different from Reba’s earlier thoughts; for the second time, lives end up changing. Reba is Riki’s girlfriend and a writer looking forward to telling Elsie’s story for her magazine.

The issue is that Elsie remembers her Germany as Warton, hatred of the Jews, and not many ‘traditional’ events when all she worried about was where her next meal would come from.

The Baker’s Daughter is a journey of two women who have to find their true selves. Even though the time and facts of their journeys differ, the outcomes have so much in common. Elsie’s story was more compelling, and the author gave more details about her life from 1944 to the present time in the novel.

1942-1945 is set for Elsie’s remembrances when wondering daily about her parents’ fate, their business, and her elder sister. She is off siring Aryan babies to give out. It was an insane program in an insane period in history.

Reba gets an insight into what life was like during those time and in learning Elsie’s unique story, Reba starts to heal from her wounds which have built up during the years after her father’s death.
The author compares the treatment of the Jews to that of illegals being brought into Texas. As a reader, you get an interesting war’s perspective among the Germans during the reign of the Nazi in their country. Many people turned a blind eye after hearing the rumors of the cruelty.

The Baker’s Daughter draws parallels between wartime Europe in the 1940s and the present day. It shows more than just survival and what feels right even when rules say otherwise.
Marilla of Green Gables

It’s a heart-touching story of life in Green Gables before Anne. The story is set in rural Prince Edward Island in the nineteenth century showing the life of a young spinster named Marilla Cuthbert and the choices that will affect her life to an unimaginable state.

Marilla is an ambitious thirteen years old whose life went downhill. Her mother passed on at childbirth, and she started doing the duties of a wife as a teenager. Her work included maintaining the house, sewing, cooking, and managing daily activities of Green Gables in hand with her father, Hugh, and brother, Matthew.

Avonea is a small, well-knit farming town located on a remote island where live fewer options for farm girls. Marilla has a single connection to the outside world, aunt Elizabeth Johnson. She’s her mother’s sister who got the opportunity to escape to the city.

Elizabeth is a spinster using her talent as a seamstress in the city, which made her build a successful business and climb up the ladder into the world. Through her aunt, Marilla gets to learn more about life outside Avonlea. Encouraged by her aunt, Marilla decides to go beyond life in Green Gables and finds a new friend and new opportunities.

She joins the Ladies Aid Society, where she raises money for an orphanage operated by the Sisters of Charity in Nova Scotia. It operates secretly since it serves as an escape zone for runaway slaves.
Over the years, Marilla becomes more involved in the issue of runaway slaves, getting motivated by the orphaned children she comes across rescued but is still being chased by bounty hunters. She wants to be part of the abolition movement, working to arrange shelter for the escapee.

Marilla’s growing attraction to John Blythe, the handsome son of a neighbor, gives her hope for a happy future. She’s in no hurry to single farm life for another in any way, and soon she is caught up in the dangerous politics. All these risks jeopardize all that she values, one of them being her relationship with john. Marilla is forced to face retribution between her dreams of making a difference in the outside world and the reality of life at Green Gables.