Joy School: Katie Nash, Book 2 (Unabridged‪)‬

Winner of the New England Book Award for Fiction

A story that tugs at the heartstrings...Thirteen-year-old Katie is new to her Missouri town, living alone with a stern, inaccessible father following her mother’s death. Unable to fit in at school, she forges alliances where she can: With her housekeeper, with a pimply fellow misfit named Cynthia, and with the gorgeous Taylor, who gets her kicks out of shoplifting. Most frustrating of all is Katie’s imperfect friendship with the proprietor of a local gas station, a handsome twenty-three-year-old who shares her love of checkers but doesn’t return her crush.