Lucy Johnston Sypher (August 6, 1907 – December 1990) wrote a series of four children's books based loosely on her childhood in the small prairie town of Wales, North Dakota: The Edge of Nowhere (1972), Cousins and Circuses (1974), The Spell of the Northern Lights (1975), and The Turnabout Year (1976).
[1] The books describe the writer's life early in Wales, as the daughter of George Henry (known as Harry), the town banker, and Caroline, a church organist and music teacher from a cultured, well-educated, big-city family.
In the books, eleven-year-old Lucy attends a small country school and befriends the three daughters of an emigrant English family and their spoiled brother, who is nicknamed "The Prince of Wales" (punning upon his tendency to cry easily and the name of the town.)
The final book, The Turnabout Year, describes her mother's difficult recovery after the birth of her younger brother, George, and Lucy's decision to attend high school in Minneapolis.
She was an instructor of English and history at Lasell Junior College in Auburndale, Massachusetts for some years before she published her first book.