DARK SECRETS is the first book in a series based on the life of a farm girl born in 1908 when the United States was becoming a world leader, and farm families made up over half of the population. Conditions for the Negro had worsened, women rallied for the right to vote, and social change in music, dance, and fashion filtered into rural areas. This book shows prejudice faced by Negroes, Gypsies, Jews, and women of that era. The book begins with Ollie trying to get home after receiving a head injury in an attack by two boys-the same boys that she thinks raped her friend and murdered a girl in a nearby community. She remains in a coma for five days, recalling vivid events of her first fifteen years. Ollie is competitive and contends with schoolmates, and her older brother and sister, but is eager to help with younger siblings. With a gift for premonition and healing, her ambition is to be a nurse, but when her papa has to pay a promissory note signed for a friend, he cannot afford to send her away to school. With no money for schooling, she worries about becoming a spinster. Still, she rejects all the young men-until she meets Roy.