Book

It’s been a year since the Big One―the Cascadia subduction zone earthquake―devastated Portland. While Meryem Zarfati’s injuries have healed and her neighborhood is rebuilding, her mother is still missing. Refusing to give up hope, Meryem continues to search for her mother, even as she learns to live without her in a changed Portland. Along the way, she struggles with her Jewish-Vietnamese heritage and what it means to honor her ancestry. After she receives a magical prayer shawl handed down from her maternal grandmother, a mysterious stranger appears and Meryem is called to save a young girl living in slavery―in sixteenth-century Istanbul. The third companion in the Oregon Book Award–winning Blue Thread series explores how we recover―and rebuild―after the worst has happened.

After the devastating loss of her father on a canoe trip meant to bring them closer together, fifteen-year-old Emma Wilson finds herself alone on the river. As she treks out from their remote campsite, she faces wild rapids and a numbing sense of guilt. Back home, Emma confronts the complexity of grief and realizes that leaving the river behind was only the first step forward.

Triinu Hoffman has to face cruelties like this every day. Shy, intellectual, and living in a rural town, she just doesn’t fit in. She does her best to hide behind her dyed hair and black wardrobe, but it’s still hard to ignore the bullying of Pip Weston and Principal Pinn. It’s even harder to ignore the allure of other girls.