Fourteen-year-old Zoe wonders how she'll survive after her family falls apart. A shoplifting episode lands her in a work program at a local nature preserve. The work starts to stabilize Zoe, and when she meets a boy who shares her love of wild things, it seems she might be home after all. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Gr 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 Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

When Zoe's parents separate, her mother takes her, along with her older sister and younger brother, from Seattle to the Midwest, planning to turn a long-empty and dilapidated family home into a bed-and-breakfast guesthouse. Desperately missing her fisherman father and blaming her mother for the separation, Zoe acts out, gets caught shoplifting, and finds herself assigned community service at a local nature preserve. There she meets and falls in love with a local boy who is as much a misfit as she is, and also falls in love with the wildness of the natural world. Younger readers will respect author Todd's own passion for the wild things of the world, but may wish she had expressed it in a less discursive manner in this very long, symbol-laden, and slow-paced novel. However, older readers including adults will be intrigued by her careful exploration of relationships and the emotional dynamics of a family in transition.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2008 Booklist From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.