Caroline Dale Snedecker’s The White Isle (1940) tells the story of an elite (but homely) girl of barely marriageable age whose father is sent as a legate to Britain because he out of favor with Hadrian. Despite her dismay at the move, she comes to love Britain and to appreciate the greater freedom of her life away from Rome. She eventually becomes a Christian and marries a Christian, but the book is not heavy-handed with religiosity, and although it is old-fashioned, its portrayal of the world of such a young woman is at once sympathetic and thought-provoking. For middle-schoolers. – Ruth Scodel