TROWBRIDGE ROAD

Two lonely outcast preteens find truth and solace through friendship over the summer of 1983.

June Bug Jordan and Ziggy Karlo share a lot in common. They both have well-meaning mothers who love them but “don’t know how to make it stick”; they both have had a traumatic year; and they’re both in need of a friend. June Bug’s father has died of AIDS, a disease only recently discovered and still tragically misunderstood. Her devastated mother is incapacitated with deep depression and an intense germ phobia—she even makes June Bug bathe with bleach. June Bug struggles daily with guilt over the last thing she said to her father while hiding the truth of her home life from neighbors. Ziggy, a “gangly,” sensitive “beanpole” of a boy with long hair and a pet ferret called Matthew, has come to live with his loving and formidable Nana Jean, down the street from June Bug, for a fresh start after a year of being bullied. The two become fast friends and, inspired by their boundless imaginations, escape to the “ninth dimension,” where they can make anything they want happen just by wishing. June Bug narrates this work of historical realism with a magical, poetic quality, turning the ordinary extraordinary. June Bug and Ziggy’s fanciful adventures are likely to resonate with fans of Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia (1977). Primary characters seem to be white.

An exceptional story for readers who feel deeply.