• Age: 10 to 14
• Grade: 5 to 8

Governor General’s award-winning author Teresa Toten’s story about one girl’s transformative eight-day road-trip to retrieve her mother’s body.

How do you face a heartbreaking past?

One day at a time.

Or as Aggie says, one crisis at a time.

In Teresa Toten’s compelling new novel Eight Days, Samantha finds out that the mother she thought had died years ago has actually just passed away. Added to this charged secret is her recovering alcoholic grandfather’s strange behaviour and sudden insistence that he take Sami back to Chicago to retrieve her mother’s body.

Luckily, Sami’s beloved neighbour and surrogate mother figure, Aggie, insists on coming on the road trip, bringing along her quirky sense of humour and fantastic wig collection.

The eight-day journey takes us from Toronto to Chicago and back again, as Sami, an American living with her grandfather in a Muslim-dominated apartment complex in Toronto, struggles to find out who she is and where she belongs.

Infused with warmth and love, even as family struggles and secrets are torn open, Eight Days is ultimately about forgiveness and strength in community. It is truly a novel for our times.

TERESA TOTEN won the Governor General’s Literary Award in Canada for The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B, which also won the American Library Association’s Schneider Family Book Award, and was chosen by the International Board on Books for Young People as one of its Outstanding Books for Young People With Disabilities in 2015. She is the author of the international bestseller Beware That Girl and the acclaimed Blondes series, as well as The Game, The Onlyhouse, and, with Eric Walters, The Taming. Teresa lives in Toronto, Ontario. Visit her online at www.teresatoten.com and on Facebook, and follow her at @TTotenAuthor on Twitter.

Teresa Toten's profile page

• Short-listed, Manitoba Young Readers' Choice Award, Northern Lights
• Short-listed, Red Cedar Award (BC Young Readers' Choice)
• Nominated, OLA Red Maple Award, Fiction
• Short-listed, Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Award
• Short-listed, Snow Willow Award (Saskatchewan Young Readers' Choice)
• Commended, OLA Best Bets, Honourable Mention
• Commended, Best Books for Kids and Teens, Canadian Children's Book Centre

A note from the author:

“Eight Days is a journey book about a teen girl who is hungry for family and has felt “other” her entire life. Over the course of an eight-day car trip to and from Chicago, Sami finds her voice as she pieces together who she is and where she belongs. Although some of the days are dark, they are woven with shards of humour and light, for ultimately, this journey is one of love.” — Teresa Toten