War-torn Afghanistan could not seem farther from Newfoundland, but it is about to change twelve-year-old tomboy Jack Cooper (or Jacqueline, as her mother insists on calling her) forever. When her father is killed in the war, she watches helplessly as her mother crumbles under sorrow and depression. Jack and her younger sister and brother, Tessa and Simon, end up across the country, living on a run-down farm in a small town on the Prairies with a great-grandmother they didn’t know existed. Worried that they will be abandoned again if Gran moves into a retirement home, Jack puts on a brave face and encourages Tessa and Simon to take on the challenges of their new life. In the process, she learns that families come in many different forms and that love, trust, and faith can build a home anywhere.

Tilly, best known for her acting career, enters children's fiction with a poignant although predictable story of three abandoned children finding a new home on a Canadian farm. Narrator Jack (short for Jacqueline) is devastated when the father she idolizes is killed while serving in a Canadian peacekeeping unit in Afghanistan. As bills mount, her deeply shaken mother proves incapable of meeting greater responsibilities, and in an act of desperation, drives the children cross-country to their great-grandmother in Alberta and leaves to start over in the city. It quickly becomes evident that she has no intention of resuming her role in the family, and their grandmother (characterized by Jack as a "mean old bitch") is now their guardian. Jack's unwavering determination to keep up the spirits of her spoiled younger sister and her learning-disabled younger brother will move readers, and her gradual recognition of her mother's self-centeredness and her great-grandmother's love is realistic. But other aspects of the novel, like the symbolic significance of "petting" a porcupine-a trick taught to Jack by her younger brother at the conclusion-feel imposed on the story. Minor characters appear vaguely familiar, reflecting stock personalities. The story has depth, but it's uneven. Ages 10-14. (Sept.)

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