WILD BLUES: the cover (and story) reveal

A new middle-grade book is due out this year. A Caitlyn Dlouhy Book (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, Simon & Schuster). A book that has been in the making for many years. It brings together so much that I love (memories of my antiques-loving uncle, my Salvadoran husband's stories, the camping guide penned by my great-grandfather, Horace Kephart) and so much that I fear (dark caves and penetrating storms, random violence and untruths).

I can't wait to share the book with you, when it appears in June. But in the meantime, I have this jacket, so gorgeously illustrated by John Jay Cabuay and so magnificently—would the word be nurtured?—by Caitlyn and her team.

So many thanks, too, to Karen Grencik and Amy Rennert, for loving me through my books.

Finally, thanks to my husband for the stories, the trust, and the illustrations that he contributed to the pages of this book. They recall the evocative, fluid images he sent to me, years ago, when he was at Yale and I was in Philadelphia, waiting and waiting.

The jacket copy:

Choose.

That's what thirteen-year-old Lizzie's mom asks her to do as summer begins.

Lizzie chooses to stay with her uncle Davy and his cabin in the Adirondack wilds.

She chooses Matias Bondanza—Uncle Davy's neighbor, and her forever friend.

She chooses her survival guide, The Art of Keppy; scrambled eggs and pupusas; a big whale of a rock; the cool beneath trees.

But soon things happen that are beyond Lizzie's control. Things she could never have imagined.

A prison break.

A kidnapping.

A blinding storm.

There are new choices to make, and Lizzie must make them.

Because the fate of everything she loves hangs in the balance.