The Blind Faith Hotel - Hardcover

Todd, Pamela

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1416954945 ISBN 13: 9781416954941

Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2008

Synopsis

When her family falls apart, fourteen-year-old Zoe feels like her whole world is going to pieces. Zoe's mother takes her kids away from their father, a fisherman who ships out to Alaska, and moves them to a run-down farmhouse she's inherited in the Midwest. Zoe's stuck -- in more ways than one.

Surrounded by strangers and a sea of prairie grass, she loses her bearings. A brush with the law lands Zoe in a work program at a local nature preserve. But the work starts to ground and steady her. When she meets a wild boy who shares her love of untamed places, it seems he might help Zoe find her way. Or is he too lost, too damaged himself?

Funny and poignant, sharp-eyed and real, this is a portrait of a girl looking for her own true self and a place she can call home.

About this title

About the Author:

Pamela Todd was awarded the Green Earth Book Award  and the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award for The Blind Faith Hotel. She has also received grants from the Ragdale Foundation and a grant from the Illinois Arts Council to teach journal writing in a women’s prison. She lives outside of Chicago, Illinois, with her husband and their children, and is an avid prairie gardener. To learn more, visit her website at www.pamelatodd.com.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 8–10—Zoe, 14, is used to moving, following her father's Alaskan fishing jobs or whatever work her mom can find. This coming move is different, though: her mother, sister, and brother are leaving the Northwest coast for the Midwestern prairie, and their father isn't coming with them. Amid construction on the ramshackle house that her mother has inherited, Zoe feels lost and angry, and blames her mom exclusively for the upheaval. After a minor shoplifting charge, she is sentenced to work for a gruff old man trying desperately to save the prairie he loves. The rippling grass is no substitute for the ocean she left behind, but from pulling out the invasive brush, she begins to understand what Hub says about everything needing space to grow. Gradually, grudgingly, she comes to terms with her new surroundings and finds her place in her family. Zoe's anger is realistic, but readers will lose sympathy for her when it turns to brattiness, and a subplot involving her falling for a boy feels extraneous. Conversations with adults are loaded with metaphors about love, loss, and starting over; they range from poignant to annoyingly forced. Still, though, the novel pushes all the right emotional buttons: family discord, cross-country moves, minor criminal activity, puberty, environmentalism, first love. Despite its flaws, this novel will find an audience with teen girls, particularly those dealing with one (or more) of Zoe's issues.—Brandy Danner, Wilmington Memorial Library, MA
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About this edition

• Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1416954945
• ISBN 13: 9781416954941
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320