After her mother abandons her for a third time, soft-spoken Janey Preston, who just started third grade two weeks before, decides she will not wait around to be taken to the awful Children’s Home again.

She loads up a grocery cart with canned food, water, and her loyal Raggedy-Andy and heads for Highway 25 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, her destination: Trinidad, Colorado, 250 miles north, where her beloved second-grade teacher, Miss Butler, lives and can hopefully give Janey what she’s been yearning for her entire life.

With an impressive blend of Cormac McCarthy’s direst settings and the childhood innocence of Don Robertson, L.M. Stockton captures youthful hope, courage, and determination.