A Summer of Silk Moths

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Overview

People can't always tell everything. Sometimes they have to leave things out so that they can recover. Start over. So that people will still be able to love them.

Seventeen-year-old Pete Shelton's life revolves around helping his friend Abe McMichael build Riverside, a nature preserve dedicated to the memory of Abe's brother, Paul. Then one summer a troubled runaway shows up—a girl named Nora who claims to be Paul's daughter. All her life, Nora has lived with secrets and lies, ...

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Overview

People can't always tell everything. Sometimes they have to leave things out so that they can recover. Start over. So that people will still be able to love them.

Seventeen-year-old Pete Shelton's life revolves around helping his friend Abe McMichael build Riverside, a nature preserve dedicated to the memory of Abe's brother, Paul. Then one summer a troubled runaway shows up—a girl named Nora who claims to be Paul's daughter. All her life, Nora has lived with secrets and lies, never knowing anything about her father. Although enemies at first, Pete and Nora slowly begin to piece together their shadowy pasts . . . and discover that their lives intertwine in a way they never imagined.

"A Summer of Silk Moths gives us the bewilderment and wonderment that real growth always brings, in a setting as fresh and tender as a new green leaf."
—Kathe Koja, bestselling author of Buddha Boy

 



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Editorial Reviews

Children's Literature - Annie Laura Smith
This love story and mystery concerns a troubled runaway, Nora, as she searches for her identity and love. This journey is seen through the eyes of Pete Shelton, the teenage narrator. Pete is helping a friend, Abe Michael, build a nature preserve called Riverside. The nature preserve is in memory of Abe's brother, Paul. Nora claims that Paul is her father. She begins to find her place in the world in this sanctuary where blue herons and silk moths have also come for the tranquility and restorative qualities. This unique story uncovers Nora's past. The moth imagery is used quite appropriately in the revelations about her life as well as those of Pete. The initial animosity between Pete and Nora that grows into affection is well-crafted. The author truly "became" these teens through her insight in expressing their confusion and uncertainty as their secrets are revealed. The writing is quite lyrical and evokes memories of such classics as A Girl of the Limberlost. Reviewer: Annie Laura Smith
School Library Journal
Gr 9 Up—Seventeen-year-old Pete Sullivan's world is turned upside down when a mysterious runaway girl shows up at the nature preserve where he works. Nora claims to be the niece of Pete's coworker and mentor, Abe, and says that Riverside was built in her father's memory. Pete struggles to determine if it's worth the effort to dig through Nora's hostility and get to know her. Along the way, the two discover buried secrets about their pasts, what it really means to be a family, and a little about love. Nourished by the wilderness surrounding Riverside, Pete, Nora, and Abe all learn what it means to start over, to evolve, to change and grow, and, finally, to emerge from their protective cocoons and fly free. Characters are engaging and engrossing, and the well-written descriptions of rural Michigan are detailed and gorgeous. Readers easily become mesmerized by the gradually unfolding plot and the growth and development of the main characters as they discover who they really are and what they mean to one another. However, the backstory is overly complicated and the ending leaves as many questions unanswered as it manages to resolve.—Wendy E. Dunn, Fort Worth Public Library, TX
Kirkus Reviews
A thoughtful, complex and moving story about loss and discovery of identity, love and the ability to change and the restorative powers of nature. Seventeen-year-old Pete Shelton is working "shoulder-to-shoulder" with Abe McMichaels, a "silent type" who lived with Pete's adoptive family for six years. They're creating a public nature preserve along the St. Joe River in Buchanan, Mich., in memory of Abe's older brother Paul, a gifted naturalist who died in a car accident 15 years earlier. The past is stirred up with the unexpected arrival of Nora, Paul's never-before-seen teenage daughter who is fleeing a "creepy stepdad" and a tempestuous relationship with her embittered mother. Like Gene Stratton-Porter's 1909 classic A Girl of the Limberlost, which inspired Willey, it is anchored by a young person's passion for collecting North American silk moths and excitement about science; there are other parallels as well. It's an absorbing mystery, some of which unfolds via Paul's moth journal written 18 years earlier, and ultimately a love story. The believable characters and the insights into their awakening emotional lives will carry readers along. (Fiction. 12 & up)
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780738715407
  • Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd.
  • Publication date: 10/8/2009
  • Pages: 264
  • Sales rank: 1,237,064
  • Age range: 12 years
  • Product dimensions: 5.50 (w) x 8.00 (h) x 1.00 (d)

Meet the Author

Margaret Willey has published in many genres—picture books, fiction and poetry. She has written six young adult novels, most recently Facing the Music, (Delacorte 1997). In 2002, Clever Beatrice (Atheneum, 2001) won the Charlotte Zolotow Award for best text in a picture book. Her most recent picture book is The 3 Bears and Goldilocks (Atheneum, 2008). A Summer of Silk Moths marks her return to young adult fiction. She lives in Grand Haven, Michigan. Visit her online at www.margaretwilley.com.

A Summer of Silk Moths was named an Honor Book for the 2010 Green Earth Book Awards in the category of Young Adult Fiction.

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