According to Great-grandmother Mary Lyons, smiles and laughter are good medicine, and every day offers new opportunities to set yourself on the path to a happy life. Raised on an Ojibwe reservation in northern Minnesota and experiencing first-hand the challenges of alcohol and drug addiction, Mary Lyons wrestled with her own demons as she learned from Native elders and her ancestors how to live a positive, fulfilled life. Now a tireless advocate for...

Fooled you! Bruh Rabbit is always playing tricks. He tricks Bruh Bear out of bed and eats his fish. He tricks Bruh Wolf out of the butter from his butter tree-then he proves that it was Wolf who ate it. He even serves oven-fried wolf to his children. But, sometimes Bruh Rabbit gets fooled too. Retelling six authentic Bruh Rabbit stories that were recorded in Beaufort County and Murrells Inlet in South Carolina, author Mary Lyons has captured their...

Between 1849 and 1859, Virginia raced to pierce the Blue Ridge Mountains by rail and reach the Ohio River. At least 300 enslaved people labored involuntarily toward that goal, along with 1,500 Irish immigrants. The state leased the labor of enslaved Virginians from local slaveholders, including four connected with nearby University of Virginia. Blue Ridge Tunnel and Blue Ridge Railroad historian Mary E. Lyons explored hundreds of primary documents...

A fictionalized version of the life of Harriet Jacobs, told in the form of letters that she might have written during her slavery in North Carolina and as she prepared for escape to the North in 1842.

A fictionalized look at the life of Joseph Jacobs, son of a slave, told in the form of letters that he might have written during his life in pre-Civil War North Carolina, on a whaling expedition, in New York, New England, and finally in California during the Gold Rush.