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Content snapshot
Flag an inaccuracy →What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.
Violence
Some
Territory war violence; some deaths in the backstory; car accident in the past
Language
Some
Adult language throughout
Sexual Content
Barely any
Teen romantic content; a relationship in the backstory
Substance Use
Barely any
Some drug and alcohol use
Emotional Intensity
A lot
Complex grief and trauma gradually revealed; the psychological weight of abandonment; requires patience as the novel withholds context
What this book is about
Taylor Markham, seventeen, is the reluctant leader of the Jellicoe boarding school students in their annual territory war against the cadets and the townies. She has been abandoned by her mother twice and raised at the school by Hannah, who has now disappeared. As Taylor reads a manuscript Hannah left behind, the stories of five young people from twenty years ago begin to intersect with the present in ways Taylor can't yet understand. Marchetta's Miles Franklin Award winner builds to one of YA's most devastating and satisfying structural revelations.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
Trauma and abandonment as sustained themes
A structural mystery that withholds painful information until the end
Reader Verification
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