Jellicoe Road

Realistic (fiction), Trade Book, Lexile 820

Teenager Taylor Markham's past is a mystery to her. She is haunted by vague memories of sitting on her father's shoulders and being abandoned by her mother when she was only eleven. Some people in the remote Australian town of Jellicoe know what really happened, but they're not saying. The answers Taylor seeks seem to be scattered throughout a book that her longtime caretaker, Hannah, has written, but Hannah has disappeared without a trace. As Taylor shoulders the responsibility of being a leader in her boarding school and handles her relationship with the intense Jonah Griggs, she slowly pieces together the clues that reveal why her mother left her all those years ago.