Audible
Narrated by Hope Davis
Newberry Award Winner
Sal is a 13-year-old whose life has been entirely uprooted. Two stories interweave as she goes through a journey of the highway and of the heart.
When Sal's mother leaves them, Sal's father moves them from Kentucky to Euclid, Ohio, making her leave behind their farm, their trees, their chickens, their dog -- everything that makes up Sal's world. Sal doesn't want to know about this new relationship between her father and Mrs. Cadaver -- an ominous name in itself. Things get even stranger and confusing when Sal meets the girl who lives next door to Mrs. Cadaver, Phoebe -- who immediately gets Sal wrapped up in her wild, suspicious imagination. Phoebe believes Mrs. Cadaver killed her husband, and there's a lunatic on the loose in the neighborhood, and then there's their bizarre English teach who not only makes them write journals, but then reads entries from their journals out loud, in class.
Phoebe's personal trials mirror Sal's, and Sal relates Phoebe's life on a ride out west with her quirky, adorable grandparents who can't seem to avoid trouble, both funny and dangerous. Little by little, Sal explores the pain of her mother leaving, and why she isn't coming home.
I highly recommend this lovely, warm, sad, thoughtful, entirely too short book about pain and loss and friendship and love. The narrator makes all the characters come alive. Entirely lovely experience.
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