Pizza To Die For is a contemporary mystery set in the suburbs of New Jersey.

Lea Wait’s other novels for young people are set in Wiscasset, Maine, with the exception of Seaward Born, which begins in Charleston, South Carolina and moves to Boston, Massachusetts, and then to Wiscasset. By setting several stand-alone books in the same place but in different years, Lea shows readers how towns, and the ways people live in them, change over the years. Some challenges young people deal with today they also coped with in the past. (Bullying is in all of her historicals.)

Although the major characters in all of Lea’s books (except Uncertain Glory) are fictional, most of her minor characters were real people, and many of the events in her books actually took place. Historical notes at the back of each book explain “which are which,” and give more historical background for the period in which the book is set.

• Influences of setting on characters and plot
• Changes in communications and transportation over the years
• How households in small towns are economically interdependent
• How needs of individuals were met in different periods
• How beliefs (re: education, women, the disabled) and traditions (e.g. how holidays are celebrated) have changed over the years.

Brenda Erickson has created a map of Lea Wait’s Wiscasset which includes all the locations mentioned in Lea’s five historical novels. To see it (without the key to the locations, which is part of the poster,) click here. To get one of the 11 x 17 inch posters for your classroom or child, sent $10, which includes shipping, to Lea Wait , Post Office Box 225, Edgecomb, Maine 04556. Add $6.00 for each additional copy.