Aren Lerner

An avid reader, Aren Lerner was always wishing for more good juvenile historical fiction herself, so she decided to write some! She holds a PhD in History and loves researching all sorts of historical details--clothing, foods, events, beliefs, and customs--and weaving these elements into her stories, sharing the relevance and joy of history! She is also the author of the nonfiction history, "Every Revolution was First a Thought: The Civil War and Transcendentalism in Transatlantic Context" (University of Massachusetts Press, 2025).

The Beneath Old Glory series begins in the year 1861 with Book 1: Fort Orphans, and includes depictions of life in the frontier West during the time of the Civil War, life in a military fort along the Oregon Trail, as well as the children's perspective of traveling in a wagon train as they all move to the northwest. Book 2: Potatoes, Tears, and Wild Roses, which opens in 1867, continues the story after the fort garrison has moved to Montana Territory, and future volumes in the series follow the same characters as their lives unfold as they move from Montana Territory to Kansas and beyond.