A Crooked Tree

"(3z (BThe night we left Ellen on the road, we drove up the mountain in silence.?(3y ?(BIt is the early 1980s, and fifteen-year-old Libby is obsessed with The Field Guide to the Trees of North America, a gift her Irish immigrant father gave her before he died. She finds solace in ?(3z?(BThe Kingdom, ?(3y ?(Ba stand of red oak and thick mountain laurel near her home in suburban Pennsylvania, where she can escape from her large and unruly family and share menthol cigarettes and lukewarm beers with her best friend. One long summer night, while driving home, Libby's mother, exhausted and overwhelmed with the fighting in the backseat, pulls over and orders Libby's little sister, Ellen, to walk home. What no one in this family knows as they drive off, leaving a twelve-year-old girl on the side of the road five miles from home with darkness closing in, is what will happen next...." -- Back cover.