Then the Rules Changed
Nine-year-old Isaac knows who he is and what he wants. Then the Czar changes the rules, and he must leave everything to emigrate to a country that is nothing like he imagined, face fears of being snatched away, and learn a new way of living and of being himself.
Then the Rules Changed
2022; reissued 2025 by Red Wheat Publishing
Illustrated, historical fiction
Cover Design, K. E. Gadeken
185 pages
Available from Amazon
Available through IngramSpark to bookstores, gift shops, libraries, schools.
More About the Book
Then the Rules Changed is my first novel. I originally intended to write it for my children, but life intervened, and they grew to adulthood. The story patiently waited until the early 2020s pandemic gave me a long writing retreat, and I completed the book for new generations.
The story takes place during a large emigration 150 years ago when thousands of German-speaking people left South Russia and Ukraine and came to the frontier plains of the United States and Canada. Today these people and their descendants are known as Germans from Russia.
The seed that grew into the novel came from a family story about a young boy named Isaac who was lost for three days in a train station during the journey. I used chronicles, diaries, and related history to develop the story. Drawings throughout the book and brief essays and maps at the end explain historical and cultural terms that may not be familiar to readers.
Comments from Readers
You captured the fears, hopes, and dreams of this young person perfectly. Your descriptions of the garb, diet, customs of that Mennonite community as they made the life-altering journey from Czarist Russia to frontier Kansas was spot on. -BB
I’m excited about sharing your book with my daughter, the supplemental resources from your website, and then to connect the museum visit. It’s one of her favorite places! She’s almost 7, but an advanced reader so we’ve read plenty of middle-grade fiction. -JW
Good book for adults as well as for kids…down to earth life of these immigrants. -Dr. R
Caught in the Middle
Twelve-year-old Alice is caught between childhood and adulthood, changing women’s roles, and World War I America and a German-speaking, peace-church heritage. Alice’s parents say she’s too American, and the girl she wants to befriend says she’s too German as America fights a war with Germany. After an old woman tells Alice about their heritage, her brothers are drafted, and the girl rejects her, Alice must decide who she is.
Caught in the Middle
2025
Illustrated, historical fiction
Cover Design, K. E. Gadeken
226 pages
Available from Amazon
Available through IngramSpark to bookstores, gift shops, libraries, schools.
More About the Book
Caught in the Middle takes place in 1918-1919, during and after World War I and a flu pandemic.
American-speaking people harass German-speaking neighbors, especially members of peace churches like Alice’s family. Her three draft-age brothers each understand their religious beliefs differently and have different war experiences. Her sister and the sister’s husband emigrate to Canada when they are threatened with imprisonment. Spanish flu spreads in military camps and among the local population.
Alice thinks new student Rebecca is the most interesting person in school. Her family lost their small farm to oil speculators. Her step-brothers are on the war’s front lines. Frau Fleming is like a grandmother to Alice. She serves tea from a samovar and tells about bringing it to America when the Russian czar changed rules so that German-speaking men had to be in his army. She says if she must move again, she will take the samovar, “unless there is a girl who keeps our ways.”
After the war, Alice learns things about her brothers and Rebecca’s step-brothers. She thinks she should write a story about one of them, but is torn about which it should be.
The seed that grew into a novel was a memory from my family heritage of a night raid when a mob swiped yellow paint on the red barn. To develop the story, I used newspapers, as well as books, documents, and information from local historians about World War I and the place where the story is set.
Comments from Readers
I found many familiar things in the story that matched what is in letters my grandfather and grandmother wrote to each other when he was a soldier in World War I. -DL
Other Books by Carolyn Zeisset
Sketches, 1877-1981: Remembering Susie
2016
Poetic sketches based on the life and lore of an ordinary but remarkable American Scotch-Irish, washer-woman grandmother
52 pages
Available from Amazon
A Mennonite Heritage: A Genealogy of the Suderman and Wiens Families, 1800-1975
Parts I and II: cultural history
Part III: genealogy
350 pages
Limited edition
Available from Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies, Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, 67063
peggyg@tabor.edu