The Return of Calico Bright - Hardcover

Winkler, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374380481 ISBN 13: 9780374380489

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2003

Synopsis

An epic coming-of-age story

She suspects her boyfriend of cheating and her best friend of betrayal. But that's not the worst of sixteen-year-old Callie Weston's sorrows. The unveiling of not just one but two of her mother’s deceptions has driven Callie to despair. With an unlikely companion, she heads off into the wild and beautiful Madras Mountains to capture the spirit of her great-great-
great-great-grandmother Calico Bright, a nineteenth-century frontierswoman and family legend. But in so doing, she gets more than she bargains for and discovers Calico Bright in the unlikeliest of places.

The Return of Calico Bright forces its protagonist to confront not only her own adolescent sorrows but the seamy underbelly of a nation’s identity, in which racial hatred lurks in surprising places. The stakes are high and the outcome critical, but in the crucible of raw experience Callie emerges from her ancestor’s heroic shadow in ways she never would have imagined.

About this title

About the Author

David Winkler is also the author of Scotty and the Gypsy Bandit. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.

From School Library Journal

Grade 6-10-Callie Weston, 16, is a suburban Oregon teen. Throughout her childhood, her mother has read to her from her great-great-great-great-grandmother's journal, sharing the adventures of her namesake, frontierswoman Calico Bright. Now Callie's safe and predictable life has started to unravel. Her parents' marriage is failing, she's a witness to a crime, and her friend Jakeeta is moving. To make some sense of her life, Callie decides to begin a project to write about her kinswoman. Shocked to discover that the journal had been created by her mother, Callie decides to head out into the wild with her African-Hispanic-American friend, Trotter, and a mule named Hanna, to do research for her own book. In the Madras Mountains, she runs afoul of a band of racists who mean to kill her and Trotter, and a strange mountain man helps nurse her back to health after a dangerous fall. Calico Bright is both a coming-of-age and an authentic action-adventure novel. Callie learns that there are evil people in her world and that it's often ordinary people who act, despite their fear, to stop them. She becomes like the Calico of the journal, a woman who will face all danger to remain true to herself and her beliefs. The book is a nice mix of contemporary teen life, adventure, and historical fiction.
Jane Halsall, McHenry Public Library District, IL
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0374380481
• ISBN 13: 9780374380489
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352