“Intriguing, delightful, and touching.” —School Library Journal (starred review)
“Creech’s best yet.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
It started out as an ordinary summer. But the minute thirteen-year-old Zinny discovered the old, overgrown trail that ran through the woods behind her family’s house, she realized that things were about to change.
It was her chance to finally make people notice her, and to have a place she could call her very own. But more than that, Zinny knew that the trail somehow held the key to all kinds of questions. And that the only way to understand her family, her Aunt Jessie’s death, and herself, was to find out where it went.
From Newbery Medal-winning author Sharon Creech comes a story of love, loss, and understanding, an intricately woven tale of a young girl who sets out in search of her place in the world—and discovers it in her own backyard.
An ALA Best Book for Young Adults
Thirteen-year-old Zinny Taylor lives in Bybanks, Kentucky, with too many brothers and sisters'a mess of ‘tadpoles' and ‘pumpkins' is what her uncle Nate calls them. When Zinny discovers a mysterious, overgrown trail that begins on her family farm, she thinks she's finally found a place of her own, a place she can go, away from her family, to hear herself think. But what Zinny comes to realize is that the mysteries of the trail are intertwined with her own unanswered questions and family secrets, and that the trail'and her passion to uncover it'is leading her on a journey home.
