Thirteenth Child

In an alternative (i.e. fantasy) version of Westward Expansion, we meet a girl named Eff--an unlucy thirteenth child and twin to her brother Lan--the lucky seventh son of a seventh son, and a highly talented magician like his father.  Their large family moves to Mill City, a town at the edge of civilization in the North Plains, where Eff's father wil become a professor of magic at a land grant college there.  Mill City is located on the Mammoth River along which runs the Great Barrier Magic, which keeps steam dragons, woolly rhinoceroses, woolly mammoths, and assorted other monsters away.  When a plague of beetles attach settler communities to the west of Mill City, Eff, her brother, father, and others must try to figure out the correct magic spell to end the plague.  Written by Patricia Wrede, this is the first volume in the Frontier Magic series.  The second volume is due out in August 2011.