Suzanne Toren

Thirteen-year-old fraternal twins Dallas and Florida have grown up in a terrible orphanage but their lives change forever when an eccentric but sweet older couple invites them each on an adventure, beginning in an almost magical place called Ruby Holler.

In the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, twelve-year-old Clara finds a baby left on the doorstep of her family's boarding house, and sets out to unravel the surrounding mysteries.

Describes the panic induced when listeners believed Orson Welles' radio broadcast of "The War of the Worlds" to be news of an alien invasion, discussing the context in which the broadcast was aired and why it was so convincing.