From the blurb:
Twelve-year-old Autumn's world is shattered when her beloved Great-Pop, Tommy Johnson, suffers a stroke that leaves him comatose. With everyone around her resigning themselves to the inevitable, Autumn is the only one not willing to give up. She and Great-Pop have more secret stories to share with each other, after all. More stories about Roy McMillan—the great love of Tommy's life whom he lost fifty years ago.
Autumn struggles to keep Great-Pop on this side of death's door. But how can she compete with the beautiful and mysterious Valley—a place of surreal magic where the sun never fully sets? Especially when there's someone familiar in the Valley who will do everything he can to keep Great-Pop from returning to her.
AnnaLund's rating:
I am shattered by this book, and so happy I got to read it.
The first half was thrilling, loving, mindblowing, and so gorgeously confusing!
Then all the pieces are slowly worked together into a whole tapestry of interwoven lives, all seen through the wild and amazing eyes of a young girl.
Absolutely mesmerizing, and smashing language to boot.
There is so much love in here that it almost flows off the pages, oh how I love to read about great-grandfathers who have made a difference. Here, storytelling has a way of taking wings and flying into your dreams at night. Here, fantasy becomes imagination, and then dreams happen, that go on to become reality. Or not.
Of course, you need to love family, and be the kind of reader who doesn’t get upset when she squeals in joy or gushes forth in amazing amounts of tears. Because there was plentiful of both.
This book is going to stay with me for a long time.
There is hope and emotions and happiness and sadness and bisexuality and love and understanding and… Great-Grand Fathers!