The protagonist is a 12-year-old named Willow Chance. She is highly gifted and
fascinated with medicine, plants, and the number 7. After a teacher accuses her of cheating
on a test she scored perfectly on, she starts meeting the school counselor, Dell Duke, who is
inspired by her intelligence. While meeting with Duke, she also meets two Vietnamese
siblings, Mai and Quang-ha Nyugen, whom she befriends and even learns Vietnamese for.
Willow also befriends the taxi driver she calls to bring her from school to Dell’s office, Jairo
Hernandez. She allows him to reflect over his life and eventually go back to school. One day,
while eating ice cream with Mai, Quang-ha, and Duke, she gets news that her parents were
killed in a car accident. With no relatives to take her in, Mai’s mother, Pattie, takes pity on her
and lets her live with them. However, they live in a garage behind Pattie’s nail salon. Pattie is
scared that she won’t pass the home inspection from Child Services, so they all move into
Duke’s apartment and transform it from a shabby mess into a believable family home. Pattie
and Jairo, who have been seeing each other, file for custody of Willow, and she is able to live
with them as her new family.
Opinion: This was a very emotional book. Sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking. It
details Willow’s struggle through grief in a unique way.
Rating: 5 - Hard to imagine a better book