HeartLand
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jul 7, 2026
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Out of the Dust meets Me and Marvin Gardens in this coming-of-age novel about a young misfit searching for the truth of her family's past, set against the backdrop of an environmental cover-up.
Twelve-year-old Xyla is sick of two things: working on her family's sixth-generation Iowa farm and her mother's nagging words, "Pay attention!" But Xyla can't help getting lost in the thoughts that fill her head, which sometimes leaves a wake of costly mistakes. If only her mom would tell her something—anything—about her dad, who left when she was little. Then maybe she could run away to live with him.
Xyla's world gets even messier as a new family begins renting a vacant house on the farm, and the daughter is the kind of kid Xyla's mom clearly prefers—focused and motivated. But when the girls stumble across an environmental disaster right next door, Xyla must learn to trust her new friend and her own complicated mother to figure out how to stop it.
Told in alternating timelines between the past and present, this heartfelt story brings to life a funny, hopeful, unforgettable narrator as she unravels the mysteries of her family and farm.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Across an evocative story of agricultural upheaval, Hoffmann (The Ocean's Heart) follows a curious tween's search for answers about her past in her guarded mother's childhood diaries. Twelve-year-old Xyla, a space-obsessed bookworm who reads as white, would rather lose herself in library books than tend to the endless chores on her family's Iowa farm. This puts her at odds with her overworked mother, Cassie, who wishes that Xyla was invested in the property. Tensions rise with the arrival of Alegría, a capable and conscientious tween whose Mexican American family rents a nearby house and who seems, to Xyla, like the daughter her mother wishes she had. When Xyla discovers Cassie's old journals, she becomes absorbed in her mother's past—especially the mystery of Xyla's absent father, whom Cassie refuses to discuss. Interspersed among Xyla's inquisitive present-day first-person perspective, verse diary entries transport readers to the 1980s, where a younger Cassie emerges as a budding environmental activist, determined to challenge her own parents' reliance on harmful farming practices. As Xyla uncovers signs of a worsening environmental threat on her family's farm, past and present narratives intertwine, linking buried secrets with larger questions about land stewardship and responsibility. This is an illuminating exploration of the enduring impact of past decisions on future generations. Ages 8–12.
