Illustration By Michael Morgenstern
Pub Date: April 2009
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-1-934813-06-5
Page Count: 268
Ages 14+
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SLIDING ON THE EDGE
by C. Lee McKenzie
Shawna Stone, sixteen, can handle anything from a Las Vegas hustle to skipping out on the rent. Scarred inside and out, she's survived with a tough, hardened attitude. Yet she's thrown when her mother abandons her in Vegas with only a bus ticket and the name and number of a stranger to call. Now this troubled, desperate teen finds herself on a Northern California horse ranch with Kay Stone, her steely, youngish, disillusioned grandmother, who overwhelms Shawna with rules and daily barn chores. Shawna will baffle Kay with her foul-mouthed anger and shrugging indifference to everything—except the maltreated horse on the ranch next door. But it's worse than even Kay suspects: Shawna's driven to cut herself by that strange voice inside her head, which at times has been her only steady companion. Kay, brittle from the loss of her marriage and her only son, struggles to keep the ranch going with only Kenny, the broken down drifter she hired, to lean on. Wondering what secrets hide behind Shawna's barricade, Kay fears that unless she somehow helps this troubled girl, she could lose her last living family member. And Kay's own secret is the very one that's kept Shawna and her mother away for all these years. As this unlikely pair struggles to co-exist, will they overcome their inner suffering to build a bridge to each other, and together find the strength to transcend the past?
Read What Writers Are Saying About Sliding On The Edge:
"Sliding on the Edge is the compelling, courageous chronicle of one girl--destined to be a no one--who fights back against her secret grief and pain and finds her life."
—Judy Gregerson, author of Bad Girls Club
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