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TOMORROW RIVER


Tomorrow River
READ PRAISE
uring the summer of 1968, Shenandoah Carmody's mother disappeared. Her twin sister, Woody, stopped speaking, and her once-loving father slipped into a mean drunkeness unbefitting a superior court judge. Since then, Shenny—named for the Shenandoah Valley—has struggled to hold her world together, taking care of herself and her sister the best she can. Shenny feels certain that Woody knows something about the night their mother vanished, but her attempts to communicate with her mute twin leave her as confused as their father's efforts to confine the girls to the family's renowned Virginia estate.

As the first anniversary of their mother's disappearance nears, her father's threat to send Woody away and his hints at an impending remarriage spur a desperate Shenny to find her mother before it's too late. She is ultimately swept up in a series of heart-breaking events that force her to come to terms with the painful truth about herself and her family.

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Dutton Adult (April 2010), ISBN-10: 0525951547, ISBN-13: 978-0525951544
NAL trade paperback (May 2011), ISBN-10: 0451233085, ISBN-13: 978-0451233080


 

PRAISE

  Check out these READER REVIEWS!

Selected as one of Shelf Awareness' Top Ten Books of the year

Received an Outstanding Achievement award by the Wisconsin Library Association Literary Awards Committee


"Set in the summer of '69 in rural Virginia, Kagen's stellar third novel....not only delivers a spellbinding story but also takes a deep look into the mores, values, and shams of a small Southern community in an era of change."
   —Publishers Weekly (Starred review)

"Shenandoah leaps off the page in vivid colour: sparky, resourceful, trying to cope with shattering damage and doing it with the matter-of-fact, heartbreaking courage that kids learn when there's no other choice. This book is packed with warmth, wit, intelligence, images savoury enough to taste—and deep dark places that are all the more terrible for being surrounded by so much brightness."
   —Tana French, New York Times bestselling author of In the Woods and The Likeness

"Be prepared for all your other obligations to be neglected when you begin Tomorrow River. I fell so deeply in love with the spunky, brave, broken-hearted Shenny and her fragile twin Woody that I couldn't rest or concentrate on anything else. Shenny warns us early on that first impressions "can be dead wrong," and that holds true to the last page of the novel. I was continually surprised, and as I read that means continually delighted—a rare gift."
   —Katrina Kittle, author of The Kindness of Strangers

"...the charming, genuine voice of Shenny, whose country-Southern dialect is beautifully rendered with rhythmic cadences, is impossible to resist...Overall, it's the tender bond between the twins that redeems the world from the cruelty around them and keeps you rooting for them right up until the end."
   —Milwaukee Magazine
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