Seventeen-year-old EMMA CONNER knows no other world than Taylorville, a town in Appalachian country. It is a world she and her friend JOLENE yearn to escape. Jolene’s ticket out of town is a scholarship to Boston to pursue her dream, marine biology, and she enrolls in a program on board a schooner, SeaQuest. The tragedy of a family caught up in dark secrets shatters Jolene’s dream before she embarks. The challenge of having Jolene’s goals ripped away is more than Emma can withstan...

Lowe’s contemporary fiction is an unforgettable, realistic, and ultimately heartbreaking story of revenge, courage and spiritual growth––Wade Malone has returned to the harsh poverty of his Indiana home of Taylorville to hide out from his recent past deeds, and within one day he places his daughter, Mattie, on display in a most humiliating, public way. This is not the first abuse seventeen-year-old Emma Connor has witnessed, and this violence triggers her ...