Susannah begins to learn about slavery in the South and the Abolitionist movement in the North, but the issues soon become more than idle gossip. Her father hires Jacob, an escaped slave, to work as a farmhand and live in the Allen's spare room. When tensions explode in her town, Susannah must face how to stand up to prejudice when it's a matter of life or death. The Spare Room is a story appropriate for all readers, ages 10 and up. The Spare Room by Jenny Land is a fast-paced, entertaining and thoughtful novel for young adults, the kind of book I loved to read as a child: not old-fashioned, but timeless, like Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird or the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House In The Big Woods series. The story is set in Vermont in 1843, almost twenty years before the onset of the American Civil War, during a time when abolitionists in New England were already calling for an end to slavery and escaped slaves from southern states were moving north toward Canada. Land has written a thoroughly engaging book, well grounded in the atmosphere of a time and a place when life was often very hard for families. The Spare Room brings this to the reader with carefully researched detail blended with the captivating energy of Susannah Allen s perceptive view of her world. This is a book that readers of any age will find hard to put down, and impossible to forget.The Spare Room reminds us that the freedom and equal opportunity we take for granted today were achieved only after a time of adversity and division, when many principled Vermonters took a stand. --Reeve Lindbergh, Author Land writes with the magical touch of Laura Ingalls Wilder. --Howard Frank Mosher, Author The Spare Room reminds us that the freedom and equal opportunity we take for granted today were achieved only after a time of adversity and division, when many principled Vermonters took a stand. --Jim Douglas, former Vermont Governor and historian