A Simple Gift

Finding the courage to make amends

Ten-year-old Carrie O’Connor wants to be an actress. After starring as a singing tooth in her class play at a New York City school, she convinces her parents to let her audition for a summer theater production in the mountains of North Carolina. And not just any production – it is a play based on a beloved children’s book written by her own mother! By virtue of a plucky audition (and not, she makes certain, her relation to the book’s author), Carrie is invited to join the cast. But as Michael Madigan’s Curtain Call wends its way toward opening night, Carrie makes a blunder so big it threatens to topple the whole production.

Young readers will identify with this spunky young heroine as she finds a way to put things right – and makes some unexpected discoveries about her writer-mother’s past in the process.

Nancy Ruth Patterson has written two other novels for children, The Christmas Cup and The Shiniest Rock of All, both of which have been produced professionally as plays. She lives in Roanoke, Virginia.