Description Twelve-year-old Ellen learns the quiet strength of family when her mother\'s deep depression prompts her to ask an estranged aunt for help.
Jeri Watts lives in Lexington, Virginia..
Her picture book A Piece of Home, illustrated by Hyewon Yum, was an Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award winner.
She is the author of numerous short stories and the novel Kizzy Ann Stamps.
About the Author Jeri Watts is a college professor and writer.
But even as she worries that depression is a family curse to which she\'ll inevitably succumb, Ellen slowly begins to carve out a space for herself and her mother on Snowden Mountain in this thoughtful, heartfelt middle-grade novel from Jeri Watts.
Adjusting to life in a small town is no easy thing: the school has one room, one of her classmates smells of skunks, and members of the community seem to whisper about Ellen\'s family.
Soon enough, city-dwelling Ellen and her mother are shepherded off to the countryside to Aunt Pearl\'s home, a tidy white cottage at the base of Snowden Mountain.
With her father away fighting in World War II and her mother unable to care for them, Ellen\'s only option is to reach out to her cold, distant aunt Pearl.
Ellen\'s mother has struggled with depression before, but not like this.
Description Twelve-year-old Ellen learns the quiet strength of family when her mother\'s deep depression prompts her to ask an estranged aunt for help
