Riding Out the Storm
By Sis Deans
(Henry Holt and Co. (BYR), Hardcover, 9780805093551, 176pp.)
Publication Date: February 28, 2012
Categories: Family - Siblings, Family - Multigenerational, Boys / Men
 |     |
Zach is riding the Greyhound bus through a snowstorm to visit his older brother Derek, whom he hasn’t seen in seven months. That’s when their parents finally went broke paying Derek’s doctor’s bills and had to give him up as a ward of the state. Nothing—not drawing in his sketchbook, not basketball—lets Zach forget that his brother is living in a mental institution five states away. But surprisingly, sitting next to a talkative teenage girl he nicknames Purplehead starts to take the edge off Zach’s pain.
Prompted by a chain of unpredictable events and by the people he meets along the way, Zach’s cynical humor gives us a poignant look at medical insurance and health care systems for the mentally ill, and at the everyday fears, joys, and revelations of adolescence.
Sis Deans is a winner of the Maine Chapbook Award and a Lupine Honor Award recipient. She lives in Gorham, Maine, with her family.
“…gracefully crafted…”--Horn Book
"...compassionate and amusing, with memorable characters..."--Kirkus Reviews
“…rewarding….and readers will be drawn into imagining how their own lives might be changed by hopping a Hound.”--BCCB
 |
Flight Behavior Barbara Kingsolver Harper |
 |
The Art Forger Barbara Shapiro Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill |
 |
Sweeth Tooth Ian McEwan Nan A. Talese |
 |
The Light Between Oceans ML Steadman Scribner |
