Turning to fiction in 1990, Sandra has published eight novels, including Prayers For Sale. They include Sacred Paint, which won the National Cowboy Hall of Fame Western Heritage Wrangler Award, and The Quilt That Walked to Golden, recipient of the Independent Publishers Assn. While a reporter, she began writing the first of ten nonfiction books. Many of her experiences have been incorporated into her novels. A staff member for twenty-five years (and the magazine’s first female bureau chief,) she covered the Rocky Mountain region, writing about everything from penny-stock scandals to hard-rock mining, western energy development to contemporary polygamy. Sandra’s novels with their themes of loyalty, friendship, and human dignity have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and have been optioned for films.Ī journalism graduate of the University of Denver, Sandra began her writing career as a reporter with Business Week. She lives in Denver, Colorado.Award-winning author SANDRA DALLAS was dubbed “a quintessential American voice” by Jane Smiley, in Vogue Magazine. Sandra's awards include four Western Writers of America Spur Awards and six Women Writing the West WILLA Awards. Her numerous bestselling adult titles include Prayers for Sale and The Diary of Mattie Spenser. Sandra Dallas's other award-winning middle-grade novels are Someplace to Call Home (2021-2022 Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List), Hardscrabble, The Quilt Walk, and Red Berries White Clouds Blue Sky. What opportunities might she find if she could just get away? What kind of future does Tenmile offer, especially for a girl? A poignant coming-of-age middle grade novel by New York Times-bestselling author Sandra Dallas. Now that she's older, Sissy is starting to think of the world beyond Tenmile and where she might fit in.

Sissy sees the same thin line between the haves and the have-nots as she assists her father in his practice, seeing firsthand the personal and not-always-private struggles of his patients. Mining is a hard job men are hurt or even killed. It often feels like there's just a thin line between life and death.

And while the mountain setting is gorgeous, Tenmile is a rough gold mining town. She's lived here her whole life, watching her father, the local doctor, tend to the town's citizens. But it's all that 12-year-old Sissy Carlson knows. Life in 1880 Tenmile, Colorado, isn't easy.

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