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Gr 5-7 Lisle returns to Rhode Island in this beautifully crafted story of 13-year-old Joelle and her search for her origins. Aunt Mary Louise often tells the teen how she was found by the railroad tracks when she was five years old and adopted by Mary Louise and her husband, Vernon. This account, which changes from time to time, seems to confuse rather than enlighten Joelle about her past. One day Carlos, a classmate, tells her that she looks like the local Narragansett Indians in an old painting in the public library. The sense of connection Joelle feels with one of th...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

Her past is a mystery. Thirteen-year-old Joelle has always been told that she was born in Chicago, was thrown out of a third-story window by her birth mother, traveled by freight train from the Midwest, and ended up in Rhode Island, where she was adopted by Aunt Mary Louise and Uncle Vernon. But rumors, snatches of overheard conversations, and her own dim recollections of living with an elderly woman and sleeping in a box convince Joelle that there is more to her history. When Joelle's classmate, Carlos, mentions that she resembles the Narragansett Indians depicted in a mur...Log In or Sign Up to Read More