This is a return to the characters of Di Camillo’s Raymie Nightingale and Louisiana’s Way Home – though it is not necessary to have read either novel to appreciate this story. Precipitated by the death of her dog companion, Buddy, Beverly has no reason now to stay at home, so she leaves. She is 14 years old, but by a sequence of good luck, and a lift from a cousin, she ends up in Tamaray, bunking with a grandmother figure in a trailer park community and getting a job with a very disorganised café owner.
This story could have been very bleak, but the wonderful characters DiCamillo draws, and the humour with which she tells this story make it very engaging. Obviously set in the US this gives the landscape an exotic feel, and the characters have a wonderfully transatlantic humour that can be appreciated anywhere. This is the story of Beverly’s survival, and the rebuilding of her grief battered resilient character – so she can eventually return to her hometown, her close friend and her less than satisfactory mother. An ultimately uplifting story of survival, acceptance and friendship in unlikely places.
Revisiting once again the world of Raymie Nightingale and Louisiana's Way Home, No.1 New York Timesbestselling author Kate DiCamillo turns her focus to the tough-talking, inescapably tenderhearted Beverly Tapinski. Beverly put her foot down on the gas. They went faster still. This was what Beverly wanted – what she always wanted. To get away. To get away as fast as she could. To stay away. Beverly Tapinski has run away from home plenty of times, but that was when she was just a kid. By now, she figures, it’s not running away ... it’s leaving. Determined to make it on her own, Beverly finds a job and a place to live and tries to forget about her dog, Buddy, now buried underneath the orange trees back home; her friend Raymie, whom she left without a word; and her mum, Rhonda, who has never cared about anyone but herself. Beverly doesn’t want to depend on anyone, and she definitely doesn’t want anyone to depend on her. But despite her best efforts, she can’t help forming connections with the people around her – and, gradually, she learns to see herself through their eyes. In a touching, funny and fearless conclusion to her sequence of novels about the beloved Three Rancheros, No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Kate DiCamillo tells the story of a character who will break your heart and put it back together again.