Kyleah's Tree - Softcover

Hill, Janet Muirhead

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0982737793 ISBN 13: 9780982737798

Publisher: Raven Publishing Incorporated of Montana, 2021

Synopsis

Eleven-year-old Kyleah Ralston, who lost contact with her dad and twin brother at age four when her parents divorced, has lived in a foster home in Kansas since her mother's death and her grandparent's move to assisted living. A loner and a dreamer, Kyleah has learned not to get too close to children who come and go through foster care. Two exceptions are a newborn with fetal alcohol syndrome and thirteen-year-old Benjamin Dorchester. Benjamin asks Kyleah run away with him. He wants to get back to Moose Jaw, Canada where his grandmother lives. Kyleah can stop in Montana and look for her father. "Dumb idea," Kyleah says.Kyeah finds solace in an oak tree in her foster parents' backyard. Because of something her mother once said to her, Kyleah believes that it is because she is ugly that her father doesn't come for her. From her tree-top haven, she wishes to be beautiful so she can be loved. She is forbidden to climb her tree after breaking her leg from a fall, but does anyway when she feels she must get away from the stress of foster living. When Uncle Donald, as she calls her foster father, builds a fence around it, she tells Benjamin she's ready to go.With many harrowing adventures and narrow scrapes with death and the law, the two wend their way northward. In Montana, a cousin of Kyleah's father takes them in—only to exploit their work and talent. It is here that Kyleah learns two things: She is pretty, and beauty does not bring her happiness or the love she craves.In her loneliness, she learns to appreciate what she has left behind. By the end of all the page-turning suspense, Kyleah learns self acceptance and discovers the true meaning of home.

About this title

About the Author

Janet Muirhead Hill, the author of eight published middle-grade novels, lives and writes from her home office in rural Montana. Janet calls her writing, "True Fiction" because she develops true-to-life characters who respond to contemporary problems faced by today's youth in a way that encourages and uplifts its readers. Hill is also president of a micro-publishing company that has produced 20 titles by ten authors to date. Her love and understanding of children, animals, nature, and ranching are fodder for her stories.

From the Inside Flap

Wishing on the sunrise from her treetop refuge, eleven-year-old Kyleah Ralston seeks magic to right all that is wrong in her life. Her twin brother is lost to her, and she believes that her father abandoned her because she isn't pretty enough. To add to her woes, her foster family doesn't understand her. When she is banned from climbing her favorite tree, she agrees to join Benjamin, her older foster brother, in his scheme to run away. Kyleah and Benjamin encounter many narrow escapes and breathtaking adventures on their journey from southeast Kansas to Moose Jaw, Canada. Through it all, Kyleah learns self-acceptance, the true meaning of home, and that family has more to do with love and respect than with blood ties.

Edition details

• Publisher: Raven Publishing Incorporated of Montana
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0982737793
• ISBN 13: 9780982737798
• Binding: Paperback
• Illustrator: Leonhard Herb
• Number of pages: 213