"I believe ignorance in the long run will prove far more expensive."
Newly arrived teacher Leanna Pallas is committed to bringing education to a rural Pennsylvania town in 1885. Miss Pallas quickly learns that not everyone in Mercerville values education as much as she does. The Collier family have lived and worked there as blacksmiths for generations, but now must decide if they should send their teenage son Joshua to school or train him in the family business. Impending poverty caused by the Industrial Revolution forces the Colliers to face a world that is quickly changing, and so must their plans for the future.
Emil Cicogna has been an educator at the high school and college levels since 1987, most recently instructing in the College of Education at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona. Inspiration for "A Sign of the Times Trilogy" included teaching history through literature using interactive Study Guides written for all three books. "A Sign of the Times" is the first book in the trilogy that begins in the 1880s, then moves through the early 1900s and World War I in the book "Rachel," and concludes in the 1920s in "The Hammer and the Anvil."