by Susan Crandall (Author)
From an award-winning author comes a wise and tender coming-of-age story about a nine-year-old girl who runs away from her Mississippi home in 1963, befriends a lonely woman suffering loss and abuse, and embarks on a life-changing road trip.Whistling past the graveyard. That's what Daddy called it when you did something to keep your mind off your most worstest fear... In the summer of 1963, nine-year-old Starla Claudelle runs away from her strict grandmother's Mississippi home. Starla's destination is Nashville, where her mother went to become a famous singer, abandoning Starla when she was three. Walking a lonely country road, Starla accepts a ride from Eula, a black woman traveling alone with a white baby. Now, on the road trip that will change her life forever, Starla sees for the first time life as it really is--as she reaches for a dream of how it could one day be.
Number of Pages: 336
Dimensions: 0.9 x 8.2 x 5.3 IN
Publication Date: February 04, 2014
Accelerated Reader:
Quiz Name: Whistling Past the Graveyard
Interest Level: Upper Grades, 9-12
Reading Level: 4.5
Point Value: 15
