The Usual Rules

A teenage girl learns to cope with sudden tragedy in the wake of 9/11 “in this moving story of love and loss [that] will make you laugh and cry” (Judy Blume).

It’s a Tuesday morning in Brooklyn—a perfect September day. Thirteen-year-old Wendy is heading to school, eager to make plans with her best friend, worried about how she looks, mad at her mother for not letting her visit her father in California, impatient with her little brother and with the almost too-loving concern of her stepfather. She’s out the door to catch the bus. An hour later comes the news: A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center—her mother’s office building.

Through Wendy’s eyes, readers follow her slow and terrible realization that her mother has died, and the family’s struggle to move forward with their lives. Wendy’s journey takes her to California, where she forges friendships with her father’s cactus-growing girlfriend, a teenage mom, and a sad bookstore owner with an autistic son. Along the way, she begins to understand the deep love and connection she has with her brother. The Usual Rules is an unexpectedly hopeful story of healing and forgiveness that offers readers a picture of how—out of the rubble—a family rebuilds its life.