Greetings from Nowhere

This book by Barbara O'Connor caught my eye on the Anderson's Mock Newbery list for 2009. I finally found time to read it this week during lunch. The story takes place in a motel off the main highway tucked in the hills of North Carolina. Aggie who has run the motel for many years with her husband Harold now deceased is facing having to sell the motel and move in with her sister in Raleigh. Willow and her dad buy the motel but Willow hates moving there now that her mom has left the family. Kirby and his mom are now their way to a school for problem children when their car breaks down and they stay at the motel. Loretta and her parents arrive at the motel on a search for the places Loretta's birth mother may have visited in the area. These unlikely and unhappy people find new meaning for their lives at the motel. The story is told in alternating chapters by each of the four main characters so the reader has the opportunity to see the changes in each life as they occur. I hope you will have a chance to stop at the Sleepy Time Motel and meet Aggie, Willow, Kirby, and Loretta, too.