The Unforgettable Guinevere St. Clair
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
“100 percent unforgettable.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Part mystery, part study of the human heart, and one pierced with rays of hope.” —Booklist (starred review)
“A big-hearted adventure about coming home.” —Publishers Weekly
A ten-year-old girl is determined to find her missing neighbor, but the answers lead her to places and people she never expected—and maybe even one she’s been running away from—in this gorgeous debut novel that’s perfect for fans of The Thing About Jellyfish.
Guinevere St. Clair is going to be a lawyer. She was the fastest girl in New York City. She knows everything there is to know about the brain. And now that she’s living in Crow, Iowa, she wants to ride into her first day of school on a cow named Willowdale Princess Deon Dawn.
But Gwyn isn’t in Crow, Iowa, just for royal cows. Her family has moved there, where her parents grew up, in the hopes of jogging her mother Vienna’s memory. Vienna can no longer remember anything past the age of thirteen, not even that she has two young daughters. Gwyn’s father is obsessed with finding out everything he can to help his wife, but Gwyn’s focused on problems that seem a little more within her reach. Like proving that the very strange Gaysie Cutter who lives next door is behind the disappearance of her only friend, Wilbur Truesdale.
Gwyn is sure she can crack the case, but when she does she finds that not all of her investigations lead her to the places she would have expected. In fact they might just lead her to learn about the mother she’s been doing her best to forget…
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This spirited and layered debut follows the move of 10-year-old narrator Guinevere (Gwyn), a feisty aspiring lawyer, from New York to her parents' rural hometown of Crow, Iowa, in the hopes of jarring her mother's memory. Makechnie sensitively sketches Gwyn's complicated feelings toward Vienna, "formerly known as my mother," who suffered a traumatic brain injury when Gwyn was four. Now Vienna cannot remember anything that happened to her since she was 13, and she vacillates between youthful ebullience and stubborn meanness. For Gwyn, Iowa offers "an exciting and fresh start, like the witness protection program," and she forms fast friendships with two local boys. She also becomes curious about the disappearance of a local man and the secrets surrounding her parents' enigmatic friend, Gaysie. Gwyn's dentist father, obsessed with the brain and devoted to his ailing wife, proves a distracted, preoccupied parent to Gwyn and her sister Bitty, allowing other memorable characters to take on greater significance. Ultimately, Makechnie's novel is a big-hearted adventure about coming home. Ages 8 12.