Trowbridge Road

A 2020 National Book Award Long List Selection
A Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2020
A Reading Group Choices Best Book of 2020
A Mighty Girl Best Book of 2020

In a stunning novel set in the 1980s, a girl with heavy secrets awakens her sleepy street to the complexities of love and courage.

It's the summer of '83 on Trowbridge Road, and June Bug Jordan is hungry. Months after her father's death from complications from AIDS, her mother has stopped cooking and refuses to leave the house, instead locking herself away to scour at the germs she believes are everywhere. June Bug threatens this precarious existence by going out into the neighborhood, gradually befriending Ziggy, an imaginative boy who is living with his Nana Jean after experiencing troubles of his own. But as June Bug's connection to the world grows stronger, her mother's grows more distant -- even dangerous -- pushing June Bug to choose between truth and healing and the only home she has ever known.

Trowbridge Road paints an unwavering portrait of a girl and her family touched by mental illness and grief. Set in the Boston suburbs during the first years of the AIDS epidemic, the novel explores how a seemingly perfect neighborhood can contain restless ghosts and unspoken secrets. Written with deep insight and subtle lyricism by acclaimed author Marcella Pixley, Trowbridge Road demonstrates our power to rescue one another even when our hearts are broken.

Author: Marcella Pixley
Publisher: Candlewick Press (MA)
Published: 10/06/2020
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.80w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781536207507
Audience: Ages 9-12

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 4.7
Point Value: 8
Interest Level: Middle Grade Plus
Quiz #/Name: 508420 / Trowbridge Road


Award: National Book Awards - Nominee


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 04/01/2020
Publishers Weekly 08/10/2020
School Library Journal 09/01/2020 pg. 81
Bulletin of Ctr for Child Bks 10/01/2020
Shelf Awareness 11/24/2020
Horn Book Magazine 11/01/2020 pg. 109
Hornbook Guide to Children 07/01/2020 - Superior,Well Above Average

About the Author
Marcella Pixley is the author of three highly praised books for young adults that have received multiple starred reviews, including Ready to Fall. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry and earned a master's from Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. She teaches writing to middle-schoolers in Massachusetts, where she lives with her family.