Far from the Tree

by Robin Benway

Overview

National Book Award Winner, PEN America Award Winner, and New York Times Bestseller!

Perfect for fans of This Is Us, Robin Benway’s beautiful interweaving story of three very different teenagers connected by blood explores the meaning of family in all its forms—how to find it, how to keep it, and how to love it. 

Being the middle child has its ups and downs.

But for Grace, an only child who was adopted at birth, discovering that she is a middle child is a different ride altogether. After putting her own baby up for adoption, she goes looking for her biological family, including—

Maya, her loudmouthed younger bio sister, who has a lot to say about their newfound family ties. Having grown up the snarky brunette in a house full of chipper redheads, she’s quick to search for traces of herself among these not-quite-strangers. And when her adopted family’s long-buried problems begin to explode to the surface, Maya can’t help but wonder where exactly it is that she belongs.

And Joaquin, their stoic older bio brother, who has no interest in bonding over their shared biological mother. After seventeen years in the foster care system, he’s learned that there are no heroes, and secrets and fears are best kept close to the vest, where they can’t hurt anyone but him.

Don't miss this moving novel that addresses such important topics as adoption, teen pregnancy, and foster care.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062330635
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	06/04/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	10,770
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.80(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Robin Benway is a National Book Award-winning and New York Times-bestselling author of six novels for young adults, including Audrey, Wait!, the AKA series, and Emmy & Oliver. Her books have received numerous awards and recognition, including the PEN America Literary Award, the Blue Ribbon Award from the Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books, ALA’s Best Books for Young Adults, and ALA’s Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults. In addition, her novels have received starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly and have been published in more than twenty countries. Her book Far from the Tree won the 2017 National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the 2018 PEN America Award and was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, NPR, PBS, Entertainment Weekly, and the Boston Globe.

Robin grew up in Orange County, California, attended NYU, where she was the 1997 recipient of the Seth Barkas Prize for Creative Writing, and is a graduate of UCLA. She currently lives in Los Angeles.

Editorial Reviews

A brilliant exercise in empathy.

New York Times Book Review

Far from the Tree is a touching story about the strength and love of unconventional families, and the unbreakable bond of siblings near and far. Robin Benway’s characters are authentically crafted, full of heart, hurt, and hope.

Brandy Colbert

A beautifully written story about the families we’re born with and the families we choose, as well as the power — and potential pain — of that choice.

Bustle

A sensitive exploration of what it means to be a family…With an abundance of warmth and humor, the novel continues to circle back to the message that love doesn’t require perfection — that perhaps it reveals itself most fully when we don’t quite get it right, but keep trying.

Chicago Tribune

A deeply moving novel...The trials the three teens face are always confronted directly and never diminished; their relationships, both new and old, are complicated and beautiful.

Shelf Awareness

Far from the Tree is the kind of book that strikes close to a reader’s heart. I had to know what happened to Grace, Maya, and Joaquin, and I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. Beautiful.

Ally Condie

Far from the Tree dives deep into themes of heartbreak and love, and presents a profound, emotional meditation on what it means to be family.

Brightly

If you’ve even once wept at NBC’s This Is Us, you particularly owe it to yourself to pick this one up.”

NPR.org

The book really is something special.

Wall Street Journal

The book really is something special.

Wall Street Journal

A sensitive exploration of what it means to be a family…With an abundance of warmth and humor, the novel continues to circle back to the message that love doesn’t require perfection — that perhaps it reveals itself most fully when we don’t quite get it right, but keep trying.

Chicago Tribune

Readers will appreciate the explorations of family, stigma, and vulnerability. Benway is looking to follow in the Caroline Cooney footsteps of smart, realism-grounded stories.

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

Readers will appreciate the explorations of family, stigma, and vulnerability. Benway is looking to follow in the Caroline Cooney footsteps of smart, realism-grounded stories.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

A beautifully written story about the families we’re born with and the families we choose, as well as the power — and potential pain — of that choice.” %COMM_CONTRIB%Bustle

Benway's unforgettable novel explores the paradoxes and entanglements of unconventional families…It's a melodrama, to be sure, but with as much brain as heart. Benway…writes with remarkable control and has the rare talent of almost vanishing as an author as she inhabits each character's perspective. Grace, Maya and Joaquin leap off the page as living, breathing teenagers, individual down to their fingerprints. The novel is also a brilliant exercise in empathy: As the siblings share their secret stories, we see them develop outrage, love, tenderness and sympathy for each other. As readers, we can't help doing the same.

The New York Times Book Review - Catherine Hong

★ 08/07/2017
In an equally heartwarming and heart-wrenching story, three siblings separated in infancy find each other as teens. Grace, who has always known she was adopted, first learns of her brother, Joaquin, and sister, Maya, while unsuccessfully searching for her birth mother during a tumultuous junior year. Her open-minded adoptive parents support a reunion, and the siblings’ initial meeting is a success. During subsequent visits, they discover the things they have in common, as well as some painful secrets. Joaquin’s childhood has not been as happy as Grace’s has been, and his deep-rooted fears are affecting his current relationships. Maya’s home life has become chaotic due to fights and alcohol abuse, and Grace knows firsthand how difficult it is to put a baby up for adoption. Writing in a shifting third-person narrative that is both nonjudgmental and deeply empathetic, Benway (Emmy & Oliver) delves into the souls of these characters as they wrestle to overcome feelings of inadequacy, abandonment, and betrayal, gradually coming to understand themselves and each other. Ages 13–up. Agent: Lisa Grubka, Fletcher & Company. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Readers will appreciate the explorations of family, stigma, and vulnerability. Benway is looking to follow in the Caroline Cooney footsteps of smart, realism-grounded stories.

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

Benway fearlessly examines the effects of loss and return from every perspective. Hope, confusion, frustration, and love coexist without shame as teens and parents come to grips with the realization that nothing stays the same no matter how desperately we want it to.

Booklist

Robin Benway writes with her full heart. Emmy & Oliver is a genuinely sweet and funny novel bursting with the inextinguishable forces of love—between parents and children, distant and inseparable friends, new and reunited lovers.

Stephanie Perkins

PRAISE FOR EMMY & OLIVER: “Emmy & Oliver is wonderful. Funny, heartbreaking, and true... just like life. Robin Benway has written characters I felt like I’d known forever, and was so sad to see go. A must read.

Morgan Matson

Benway peels away the surface and digs down to the raw emotions the teens and their families feel… as a portrait of the emerging adolescent, it engages.

Stephanie Garber

Far from the Tree dives deep into themes of heartbreak and love, and presents a profound, emotional meditation on what it means to be family.

Brightly.com

09/01/2017
Gr 8 Up—Only child Grace was adopted at birth; when she finds herself placing her own daughter up for adoption, she begins searching for the bio family she's never known. She quickly discovers that she is a middle child, sandwiched between loudmouth younger sister Maya and older brother Joaquin, who has spent nearly his entire life in the foster care system. As Grace struggles to move forward from the loss of her daughter, she begins to bond with her siblings who have hardships of their own. Maya's adoptive family is not as picture-perfect as they seem, and Joaquin is on the cusp of something wonderful but is afraid it could all end in disaster. The siblings find themselves turning to one another and learning that family comes in many forms. Benway has created three unique and endearing characters who have experienced adoption in very different ways. Grace's story will pull at heartstrings, while Maya is relatable as a teen struggling with her relationships with her family and girlfriend Claire. Joaquin is scared and rough around the edges. With a well-imagined cast of secondary characters who add angst, humor, and depth, Benway adeptly leads readers through a tale of love, loss, and self-discovery. Expect to cry real tears at this one. VERDICT Well-written and accessible, this is a must-purchase for all YA collections.—Erica Deb, Matawan Aberdeen Public Library, NJ

School Library Journal

★ 2017-08-02
Placing her daughter for adoption left a hole in Grace's heart; her adoptive parents can't fill it, and her birth mother's unreachable—then Grace learns she has siblings. Maya, 15, a year younger than Grace, was adopted by wealthy parents 13 months before their biological daughter, Lauren, arrived. Joaquin, nearly 18, a survivor of 17 failed foster-care placements and one failed adoption, is troubled when his current foster parents express a wish to adopt him. Grace reaches out, and the siblings soon bond. All—Maya especially, standing out in a family of redheads—are grateful to meet others with dark hair (only Joaquin identifies not as white but Latino) and weird food preferences (French fries with mayo). Still, each keeps secrets. Maya discusses her girlfriend but not her mother's secret drinking; Joaquin edits out his failed adoption; Grace, her pregnancy and daughter's birth. It hurts that her siblings have zero interest in tracking down the mom who gave them away, yet Grace persists. Chapters alternate through their third-person perspectives, straightforward structure and syntax delivering accessibility without sacrificing nuance or complexity. Family issues are neither airbrushed nor oversimplified (as the ambiguous title suggests). These are multifaceted characters, shaped by upbringing as well as their genes, in complicated families. Absent birthparents matter, as do bio siblings: when their parents separate, Lauren fears Maya will abandon her for her "real" siblings. From the first page to the last, this compassionate, funny, moving, compulsively readable novel about what makes a family gets it right. (Fiction. 13-18)

Kirkus Reviews