Walk Two Moons
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| Walk Two Moons | |
|---|---|
 First edition cover with the Newbery Medal |
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| Author | Sharon Creech |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Children's novel |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback) |
| Pages | 288 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-06-023334-6 (first edition, hardback) |
Walk Two Moons is a novel written by Sharon Creech and published in 1994. It won the 1995 Newbery Medal.
Salamanca Tree Hiddle is taking a trip with her grandparents to Lewiston, Idaho, to visit her mother's place. Sal, tells her grandparents the story of her best friend, Phoebe Winterbottom, whose mother, like Sal's, unexpectedly decides to leave home. Sal meets Phoebe when Sal and her father leave their farm in Bybanks, Kentucky, to Euclid, Ohio, where Margaret Cadaver, whom Sal's father befriended after her mother's death, lives. Phoebe is a high-strung, prim, and wildly imaginative girl. She feels certain that some sinister connection exists between the morbidly-named Mrs. Cadaver, who is her next-door neighbor, the mysterious notes that keep appearing on her family's doorstep, and the strange boy, whom Phoebe dubs the lunatic, who appears at the house one day. Sal gradually becomes caught up in her friend's melodrama and finds herself engaged in a heady flirtation with a boy from school, Ben.Sal intersperses Phoebe's story with memories of her mother, who was a loving, spontaneous woman. By this point in Sal's tale, she and her grandparents have reached South Dakota. They stop to swim in the Missouri River.
Sal and her grandparents take in Old Faithful, and Gram, whose breathing is troubled, revels in the splendor of the powerful geyser. When they leave Yellowstone National Park, Sal resumes her story, driven by a sense of urgency to finish it as soon as possible. Sal and Phoebe determine that the sergeant's son lives at a nearby college campus, and, convinced he holds the key to the mystery, take a bus to visit him. On campus, the two girls find the lunatic and Mrs. Winterbottom sitting on a bench, holding hands. Sal, overwhelmed, runs away as fast as her legs can carry her. She finds herself at a mental hospital, where, to her surprise, she finds Ben and his mother, who is a patient at the hospital. The two young people giddily share a delicious first kiss. Mrs. Winterbottom returns home a few days later and explains to her family that the lunatic is actually her illegitimate son, about whom she had always been afraid to tell her family for fear of letting them down. The Winterbottoms are shaken, but ready to listen to Mrs. Winterbottom. At the same time, Sal decides that she will make amends with Mrs. Cadaver and listen to her story. Mrs. Cadaver explains to Sal that she and Sal's mother became friends on the long bus trip from Ohio to Idaho, and that Mrs. Cadaver and Sal's father became friends because Mrs. Cadaver was the lone survivor of the accident that killed Sal's mother and was able to tell Sal's father about the last days and moments of Sal's mother's life.
