Sharon Creech

To Zinny Taylor, life is like trying to untangle spaghetti – she needs to escape the chaos of her family. So when she finds a long-forgotten trail in the wild woods near her home, she resolves to follow it. It’s a journey that leads her to unravel the dark secrets of her aunt’s life – and her own. And while Zinny chases ghosts in the woods, gorgeous Jake Boone is determined to chase her . . .

After her mother leaves home suddenly, thirteen-year-old Sal and her grandparents take a car trip retracing her mother's route and Sal recounts the story of her friend Phoebe, whose mother also left

In her own singularly beautiful style, Newbery Medal winner Sharon Creech intricately weaves together two tales, one funny, one bittersweet, to create a heartwarming, compelling, and utterly moving story of love, loss, and the complexity of human emotion.Thirteen-year-old Salamanca Tree Hiddle, proud of her country roots and the "Indian-ness in her blood," travels from Ohio to Idaho with her eccentric grandparents. Along the way, she tells them of the story of Phoebe Winterbottom, who received mysterious messages, who met a "potential lunatic," and whose mother disappeared. As Sal entertains her grandparents with Phoebe's outrageous story, her own story begins to unfold--the story of a thirteen-year-old girl whose only wish is to be reunited with her missing mother.