A Wish with Wings
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected May 19, 2026
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- $14.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A tender tale of courage, hope, and holding onto yourself even when everything around you seems to be falling apart — perfect for fans of Katherine Applegate and Barbara O'Connor.
Everyone says twelve-year-old Evan Calais is feral. She likes to spend her time outside, fishing and having mud fights in her small town of Little John Island, Louisiana. But when a sinkhole causes the town mine to collapse, trapping all forty-eight miners, everything in her life comes to a standstill. Because Evan's dad is one of the miners trapped inside.
Evan seeks solace the only way she knows how—in the outdoors—and comes upon the most peculiar thing. An egg.
It's a large egg. And it's alone. So while Evan waits for her dad to come home, she also finds herself caring for the strange, abandoned egg. If this egg can hatch...maybe her dad has a chance of coming home, too. But as she incubates the egg, Evan will need to make a big decision. For she has a secret—she might know what caused the cave-in.
Sarah Guillory's latest middle grade novel is a deeply heartwarming exploration of the importance of imagination, the freedom in nature, and the power of the truth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A 12-year-old rails against others' expectations and revels in her budding autonomy in this evocative novel from Guillory (Gus and Glory). Evan Calais would happily spend her days outside, fishing, staging mud fights, and roaming the swamps of Little John Island, La., but her fastidious mother and forbidding aunt expect her to stay both clean and indoors. During one of her nature wanderings, though, Evan discovers an unattended egg that she believes belongs to a whooping crane, which she sneaks home; she also notices unsettling bubbles rising from the swampland owned by the mining company that employs her father. When her dad is trapped by a cave-in, Evan is wracked with guilt over what she saw and failed to report, and begins withdrawing emotionally from her best friend, whose father supervises the mine. As Evan wrestles with questions of responsibility, loyalty, and courage, she pins her hopes for the future on the fragile egg in her care. Lush prose and emotionally grounded storytelling render Evan's moral awakening both convincing and affecting, immersing readers in a vividly realized setting that celebrates the natural world and one's place in it. Main characters read as white. Ages 8–12.
