Today women have a glass ceiling. In the 1930s that ceiling was made of wood, so following your dream only took you so far--especially if you went against societal norms and what your friends and family told you you should or should not do. This is the story told in A Burnished Rose, the much-anticipated sequel to the award-winning Rosebloom.

Rose Krantz, a soon-to-be eighteen-year-old, has just come home to the family farm in southwest Wisconsin after running away from home two years earlier to follow her dream. She's home because...

Shell shock, battle fatigue, post traumatic stress disorder it all means the same thing to veterans who have served their country by putting themselves in harm's way. But for women veterans of WWII like Rose Krantz, it also meant coming back to a country that, even during the war, hadn't given them the rights that the lowest-ranking male soldier enjoyed, barely acknowledged the sacrifices they had all made, and, in some cases, chastised them for even participating.

So in 1945, when Rose came home to bury her husband only to find out she was pregnant with his child, her nightmares,...