It’s fiction day with a richly layered coming-of-age story set in Iowa farm country in the months before the attack on Pearl Harbor and two novels by authors with Minnesota connections.

“Scattergood” >> by H. M. Bouwman (Neal Porter Books/Holiday House, $18.99)

I’d never met a real refugee before. Or a real Jew, for that matter. We didn’t read about the Jewish refugees much in the newspaper or hear about them on the radio, big names like Hitler and Churchill got the war headlines. But now they were living right near us: Jewish refugees and other European war refugees as well, at the hostel. — from “Scattergood”

Scattergood is a real place just outside West Branch, Iowa, where St. Paul author Bouwman sets her marvelous new middle-grade novel during the months leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States entry into World War II. Peggy is a smart 13-year-old who loves math and lives on a farm with her parents. It’s a pivotal time in the girl’s life. Her favorite cousin/friend is dying of leukemia and Peggy vows to find a cure, first with research and then with prayer. Joe, a boy she’s known her entire life, is acting strange and her neighbor and sort-of friend Ida Jean is an annoyance with her chatter.

When Jewish refugees begin arriving at the Scattergood hostel run by Quakers, Peggy is confronted with a new way of looking at the world beyond the farm. She makes friends with the Professor, an old man who teaches her to play chess when he’s not writing letters to people back home in Germany about his family’s disappearance. She thinks she’s in love with Gunther, a 16-year-old German refugee who saw his family herded into a truck while he was hiding. At the farm, Peggy’s mother isn’t speaking to her father after Peggy learns the secret in her parents’ past.

This novel is so rich in texture and beautiful writing it’s almost impossible to capture Bouwman’s depiction of Peggy’s complex emotions. For instance, she projects her need for clarity about dying and death onto the Professor, whom she sees as some kind of seer who will tell her stories to make her feel better. But the old man and Gunther see the members of Peggy’s community as naive in their lack of understanding about what is happening in Europe while they are safe in West Branch.

Bouwman writes sometimes with humor (“Delia wanted to be a poet, which made her talk funny.”) And with pathos (“The day sulked.”).

Although “Scattergood” is marketed as a middle-grade novel, it is just as riveting for adults and would make a great book club pick. It earned starred reviews in Kirkus Reviews and Booklist. It wouldn’t be surprising if, next year at this time, the novel is a finalist for the 2025 Minnesota Book Award and other honors.

Bouwman, who teaches creative writing at the University of St. Thomas, writes fantasy and historical fantasy including “A Crack in the Sea,” “A Tear in the Ocean” and “Gossamer Summer.”

“The Autumn of Ruth Winters” >> by Marshall Fine (Lake Union Publishing, $16.99)

Ruth was convinced of her own worthiness as a person but struggled with the belief that no one else saw her that way and that it was somehow her fault. For her, every conversation was a test she strained to pass, and every social situation was a corner into which she was being painted, in order to be judged and found wanting. She avoided conversation as much as possible, deploying a sharp tongue as a preemptive defense mechanism. — from “The Autumn of Ruth Winters”

Martin Fine, who grew up in St. Louis Park and graduated from the University of Minnesota, gives us a tough/tender story about Ruth, who was born anxious and was isolated for much of her adulthood. She never lets her guard down.

We meet Ruth when she is 70, babysitting neighborhood toddlers and enjoying them. We learn of her rigidity, brought on by lifelong social anxiety and fear of embarrassment in even the simplest situations. Ruth had spent much of her teen years working at her parents’ shoe stores, but she was so crabby-looking her dad had to remind her to smile at the customers. Later, she spent her 20s caring for her helpless father, including the most basic tasks of hygiene chores such as washing him and changing his diapers. A bookkeeper with the same firm for 40 years, Ruth lost her job to downsizing. Her husband has died, and now she’s faced with the horrible prospect of an invitation to her high school’s 50th reunion. She wouldn’t think of attending, until she reconnects with a man she admired and was friends with in high school.

Running through the story is Ruth’s unhappy relationship with her younger sister, Veronica, who is dying of cancer. The sisters would go for years without speaking, each jealous of the other. Ruth resents her sister for being carefree and marrying well-to-do men. Veronica resents her sister because their parents held Ruth up as the smart one. But thanks to Veronica, Ruth attends the reunion and… we’ll leave it there to avoid spoilers.

“The Autumn of Ruth Winters” is set in the Twin Cities, and older readers will enjoy Ruth’s memories of listening to the top 10 songs on KDWB and WDGY. The author shows us Ruth’s no-nonsense view of life by her reaction as a teen to seeing pictures of the Kama Sutra: “She scrutinized the pen-and-kink drawings by Japanese artists of what looked like the geishas and samurais joined in a variety of sexual positions. The drawings made the genitals of both genders look unappetizingly bewhiskered… Most of the positions in the drawings struck her as so much showing off.”

Author Fine’s career includes journalism, writing criticism and making films. He has written biographies of filmmakers John Cassavetes and Sam Peckinpah. He lives in New York state.

“Something Better” >> by Diane Parrish (Meridian Editions, $19.95))

The stranger who shuffled home after dark that night was some shadow of David, almost unrecognizable. He resembled David but had gone completely blank. He just shook his head and refused to say a word when Ruth ran to greet him. She put her hand on his shoulder and asked, ‘Are You All Right, honey?’ — from “Something Better”

Can a couple overcome marital unfaithfulness through forgiveness? That’s the knotty question at the center of Parrish’s novel about a couple who thought they had it all. Ruth and David live in Connecticut where she is a lawyer for an international real estate business and he creates beautiful gardens. When David’s best friend is killed in an auto accident, David comforts the man’s daughter, Annabeth, while Ruth travels to San Francisco and then to China on company business. Ruth longs to have a baby, but with miles between her and her husband, that isn’t going to happen soon. When David’s business is destroyed, he misses his wife more than ever. The story moves between Ruth, David and Annabeth, leading to David’s guilt (no spoiler, this is not a mystery) and Ruth’s need to decide if she has forgiveness in her. Parrish’s characters are finely drawn and the reader can’t help feeling sympathy for all of them.

A former prosecuting attorney, Parrish has family and colleagues from Minneapolis.