Return to Sender

  'A feisty heroine faces off against outlaws, bullying relatives, and a Minnesota winter'- ARC review

  'Humorously highlights a forgotten chapter of American history--a time when babies came in the mail. ' -ARC review 

'Hermione Granger meets True Grit—an engaging heroine battles the worst relatives since the Dursleys of Harry Potter.' -ARC review 



   The year is 1913, and 2-year-old Matty Cooper is being sent on a train journey from Minnesota to Wisconsin via a new post office program called Baby Mail. His sister, 12-year-old Owl, is along as watchdog and babysitter. The trip is  fraught with perils: outlaws, storms, rockslides, train derailments. But a far worse danger awaits the children at journey's end—their child-hating Aunt Edna.

     Forbidden to go to school, Owl is forced to drudge from morning to night, while Matty is threatened with being sent to an orphanage. Only the quirky, mysterious lady next door, Chicken Annie, reaches out to help the desperate children. But when Annie breaks her leg and winds up in the hospital, Owl's aunt seizes her chance to cheat Annie out of her property and have her sent to a mental asylum.    

   Owl's the only one who can help Annie—but if she does, her aunt threatens, Matty will be sold to an adoptive family. Somehow Owl must find a way to not only save Annie, but to escape from the house that's become a prison--and find a way back home.