• Age: 0 to 18
• Grade: p to 12
• Reading age: 0

Jessica, a serious, bookish sixteen-year-old from New Brunswick, places a Personals ad in the Globe and Mail. She is looking for her father, a drug-dealing philanderer who has recently taken off with the local hairdresser. Seventeen-year-old Sween -- an authority-defying drop-out from northern Saskatchewan -- responds. Over time they establish an intense but long-distance relationship in which they provide each other with advice and support as Jessica finds herself attracted to one of her father's biker friends, and Sween suffers a nervous breakdown after fending for himself in a cabin in the bush. Eventually, Sween travels east to help Jess stop her father from putting her autistic brother Timmy in an institution. The resulting encounter is a surprise to them both as they find reality at odds with the images they have of each other.

Rod MacIntyre lives and writes in northern Saskatchewan. His award-winning young adult fiction includes Feeding at Nine, Yuletide Blues, The Blue Camaro and The Crying Jesus.

Rod MacIntyre's profile page

Wendy MacIntyre lives in Ottawa where she works as a freelance writer and editor. She was born in Glasgow, Scotland and has a Ph.D. in English Literature (University of Edinburgh). She has published scholarly essays and short fiction in journals in Canada, the United States, and Britain, including in the University of Windsor Review and the Malahat Review. Her novels are Mairi (Oolichan Books), The Applecross Spell (XYZ Publishing), and Apart (Groundwood Books), a young adult novel co-authored with award-winning Saskatchewan writer R.P. MacIntyre. Apart was named one of the 10 best picks for young adult fiction for 2007 by the Ontario Library Association and a 2008 Starred Selection Best Books for Kids and Teens by the Canadian Children's Book Centre.

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• Commended, CCBC Best Books for Kids & Teens (Starred Selection)
• Commended, OLA Best Bets - Reading for Young Adults (Fiction)

The authors of this 'novel-in-letters' capture teen angst and growth...The double author format allows the reader to become intimately acquainted with both Jessica and Sween, so different from each other and yet so similar in many ways.

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...a memorable and outstanding read...This is a thoughtful, engaging narrative that will undoubtedly speak to more mature young adult readers.

CM Magazine