THE ART OF RUNNING AWAY

Budding 12-year-old artist Maisie is unhappy when her parents abruptly decide she should leave upstate New York to spend the summer in Edinburgh, Scotland, with her aunt.

Her frustration evolves into amazement when her elder brother, Calum, who ran away 6 years ago, turns up on her aunt’s doorstep and convinces Maisie to instead spend the summer with him in London, where he is a university undergraduate. Since Calum has rarely been mentioned at home, she had no idea why he’d left or where he’d gone—so it’s baffling to learn that he has remained close to their Aunt Lisa. But that confusion is nothing compared to her fury when she learns the real reason behind Calum’s absence, a devastating secret that leads her to reevaluate everything she thought she knew about her family. Just as Maisie is sure she can fix the financial problems that threaten her family’s custom portrait painting business, she’s confident she can reunite Calum and her parents. It’s only with wise, gentle advice from Rose and Benji, who are close to Calum, that she begins to understand that it’s Calum’s business—not hers—to decide when and how to patch things up, making for a believably nuanced and unresolved conclusion. This debut sensitively portrays the fallout caused by family rifts. Most characters default to White; Benji is Japanese British.

A gentle exploration of pain, love, and acceptance.