Like Sisters on the Homefront

In this Coretta Scott King Honor Book by New York Times bestselling author Rita Williams-Garcia, troubled fourteen-year-old Gayle is sent down South to live with her uncle and aunt, where her life begins to change as she experiences the healing power of family. Now with a beautiful new cover!

Rediscover this Coretta Scott King Honor Book by master storyteller Rita Williams-Garcia, about a teen girl who learns that there is so much more to her story than she thought. 

When fourteen-year-old Gayle gets in trouble with a boy—again—her mother doesn’t give her a choice: Gayle is getting sent away from New York to her family down South, along with her baby, José.

In small-town Georgia, there is nowhere to go but church, nothing to do but chores, and no friends except her goody-goody, big-boned, kneesock-wearing cousin Cookie. She’s stuck cleaning up after Great, the family matriarch who stays upstairs in her bed.

But as she listens to Great’s stories, Gayle learns about family history and secrets—and all the stories of her past begin to change how Gayle sees her future.

Rita Williams-Garcia's Newbery Honor Book, One Crazy Summer, was a winner of the Coretta Scott King Author Award, a National Book Award finalist, the recipient of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, and a New York Times bestseller. The two sequels, P.S. Be Eleven and Gone Crazy in Alabama, were both Coretta Scott King Author Award winners and ALA Notable Children’s Books. Her novel Clayton Byrd Goes Underground was a National Book Award finalist and winner of the NAACP Image Award for Youth/Teen Literature. Rita is also the author of five other distinguished novels for young adults: Jumped, a National Book Award finalist; No Laughter Here, Every Time a Rainbow Dies (a Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Book), Fast Talk on a Slow Track (all ALA Best Books for Young Adults); and Blue Tights. Rita Williams-Garcia lives in Jamaica, New York, with her husband and has two adult daughters.