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IN THE WILD LIGHT

Jeff Zentner

Jeff Zentner's new YA novel, a heartwarming - and heartbreaking - story of grief, found family and young love.
From the award-winning author of The Serpent King comes this beautiful examination of grief, found family, and young love. Life in a small Appalachian town is not easy. Cash lost his mother to an opioid addiction and his Papaw is dying slowly from emphysema. Dodging drug dealers and watching out for his best friend, Delaney, is second nature. He's been spending his summer mowing lawns while she works at Dairy Queen. But when Delaney manages to secure both of them full rides to an elite prep school in Connecticut, Cash will have to grapple with his need to protect and love Delaney, and his love for the grandparents who saved him and the town he would have to leave behind. Jeff Zentner is the author of New York Times Notable Book The Serpent King, Goodbye Days, and Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee. He has won the William C. Morris Award, Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award, International Literacy Association Award, Westchester Fiction Award, been longlisted for the Carnegie Medal and UKLA and was a finalist for the Southern Book Prize and Indies Choice Award. He was a Publishers Weekly Flying Start and an Indies Introduce pick. Before becoming a writer, he was a musician who recorded with Iggy Pop, Nick Cave and Debbie Harry. He lives in Nashville with his wife and son.
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Published 2021-08-10 by Crown Books for Young Readers

Comments

Zentner conjures a moving and rich novel about friendship, loss, kind strangers, the blindness so often present in the pursuit of love, and love itself Read more...

UK: Andersen ; Brazil: Companhia das Letra ; Romanian: Editura Art

Heartfelt and deeply moving... a book that readers will unhesitatingly take to their hearts.

A brilliant treasure of a book that holds up a mirror to the best parts of our humanity Read more...

A novel with the soul of a poem. Jeff Zentner proves yet again that he's one of the most luminous voices writing for young people today.

Publishers Weekly names IN THE WILD LIGHT as one of their Best Books of 2021 Read more...

An ode to the healing power of nature and art, but also a testament to the beauty of family both blood and created. No one else can write like Jeff Zentner.

In a word: sublime. This gift of a book will leave you with fiery, incandescent hope in your chest.

Evocative and moving, highlighting Zentner's impressive skill with both poetry and prose. Read more...

Vitally redefines friendship as something that must be protected, sacrificed for, and tended to with wisdom, patience, and love - and, to our luck, rendered in Zentner's gem-like sentences.

A wise, gorgeous exploration of loss and survival that will make readers cry... Lyrical and heartbreaking.

IN THE WILD LIGHT is Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal Read more...