Skylark

Skylark is a short novel for young readers by Patricia MacLachlan, published in 1994 as the second book in the Sarah, Plain and Tall series and the sequel to the story that introduced the Witting family.

The story is told by Anna, whose father married Sarah, a woman from Maine who came west to a prairie farm and has never quite stopped missing the sea. A summer drought turns the land dry and brown, fires run across the fields, and coyotes come to the well looking for water. Sarah takes Anna and her brother Caleb back to Maine, where there is shade, water and family, while Papa stays behind because he will not leave his land. Anna spends the weeks in a place that is beautiful and strange, missing home and her father, and wondering what will happen to all of them if the rains never come.

MacLachlan writes in short chapters and leaves a great deal to what Anna notices rather than explains, and the book is as much about a stepmother's homesickness as it is about a child's.