Illinois Authors

The Illinois Center for the Book banner

Karen Halvorsen Schreck

Born: 1962 in Elmhurst, Illinois
Pen Name: None

Connection to Illinois: Schreck was born in Elmhurst. She received her doctorate in English and Creative from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She currently resides in Wheaton.

Biography: Karen Halvorson Schreck is a frequent visiting professor of English at Wheaton College. She also works as a freelance writer and editor. Her short stories and articles have appeared in ''Literal Latté'', ''Other Voices'', ''Image'', as well as other literary journals and magazines.


Awards:
  • -- Pushcart Prize
  • -- Illinois State Arts Council Grant
  • -- First Prize Awards for memoir and devotional magazine writing from the Evangelical Press Association

Blog: http://www.karenschreck.com/blog/
Email: karen@karenschreck.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karenhalvorsenschreck/
Website: http://www.karenschreck.com/
Karen Halvorsen Schreck on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=karen+halvorson+schreck


Selected Titles

Broken ground :
ISBN: 9781476794839 OCLC: 913336970

When a young oil rig widow escapes her grief and the Texas Dust Bowl, she discovers a surprising future--and new passion--awaiting her in California in this lyrically written romance by the author of Sing for Me. Newly married to her childhood sweetheart, twenty-one-year-old Ruth Warren is settling into life in a Depression-era, East Texas oil town. She's making a home when she learns that her young husband, Charlie, has been killed in an oil rig accident. Ruth is devastated, but then gets a chance for a fresh start: a scholarship from a college in Pasadena, CA. Ruth decides to take a risk and travel west, to pursue her one remaining dream to become a teacher. At college Ruth tries to fit into campus life, but her grief holds her back. When she spends Christmas with some old family friends, she meets the striking and compelling Thomas Everly, whose own losses and struggles have instilled in him a commitment to social justice, and led him to work with Mexican migrant farmworkers in a camp just east of Los Angeles. With Thomas, Ruth sees another side of town, and another side of current events: the forced deportation of Mexican migrant workers due to the Repatriation Act put into place during President Herbert Hoover's administration. After Ruth is forced to leave school, she goes to visit Thomas and sees that he has cobbled together a night school for the farmworkers' children. Ruth begins to work with the children, and establishes deep friendships with people in the camp. When the camp is raided and the workers and their families are rounded up and shipped back to Mexico, Ruth and Thomas decide to take a stand for the workers' rights--all while promising to love and cherish one another--

Dream journal /
ISBN: 1423101065 OCLC: 71250757

Hyperion Books, New York : ©2006.

Sixteen-year-old Olivia, facing the impending death of her mother from cancer, records her thoughts in a journal as she grapples with the changing behavior of her best friend and her own desire to run away from all of her problems.

Lucy's family tree
ISBN: 0884482251 OCLC: 46448967

Tilbury House, Gardiner, Me. : ©2001.

Lucy, an adopted child from Mexico, is convinced that her family background is too complicated for her to make the family tree she is supposed to create for a homework assignment.

  Sing for me
ISBN: 9781410470614 OCLC: 876004505

Chicago, 1937. Raised in the Danish Baptist Church, Rose Sorensen knows it's wrong to sing worldly songs. But Rose still yearns for those she hears on the radio -- Cheek to Cheek, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes--And sings them when no one is around. One day, Rose's cousin takes her to Calliope's, a jazz club, where she discovers an exciting world she never knew existed. Here, blacks and whites mingle, brought together by their shared love of music. And though Rose worries it's wrong -- her parents already have a stable husband in mind for her -- she can't stop thinking about the African American pianist of the Chess Men, Theo Chastain. When Rose returns to the jazz club, she is offered the role of singer for the Chess Men. The job would provide money to care for her sister, Sophy, who has cerebral palsy -- but at what cost? As Rose gets to know Theo, their fledgling relationship faces prejudices she never imagined. And as she struggles to balance the dream world of Calliope's with her cold, hard reality, she also wrestles with God's call for her life. Can she be a jazz singer? Or will her faith suffer because of her worldly ways?

  While he was away
ISBN: 9781402264047 OCLC: 782879975

Sourcebooks Fire, Naperville, Ill. : ©2012.

When Penna Weaver's boyfriend goes off to Iraq, she's left facing life without him. Then David stops writing. She knows in her heart he will come home--but will he be the same boy she fell in love with?

While he was away /
ISBN: 140226402X OCLC: 779365380

Sourcebooks Fire, Naperville, Ill. : ©2012.

When Penna Weaver's boyfriend goes off to Iraq, she's left facing life without him. Then David stops writing. She knows in her heart he will come home--but will he be the same boy she fell in love with?

 

 

Accessibility