July 2017 First Editions Club for Young Readers

New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (pub: July 25, 2017)

Middle Grade. First Edition. Signed.

As new in dust jacket.

A quirky and heartfelt middle-grade debut about a spunky girl determined to clear her mother's name.

Twelve-year-old Ruby Clyde Henderson’s life suddenly changes the day her mother’s boyfriend holds up a convenience store and her mother is wrongly imprisoned for assisting with the crime. Ruby and her pet pig, Bunny, terrified and very much alone, find their way to her estranged Aunt Eleanor's home. Aunt Eleanor is a nun who lives on a peach orchard called Paradise and has turned away from their family long ago. Ruby Clyde believes that she's the only one who can find a way to help heal old wounds to save her mother and bring her family back together again. But in the end, she learns that being in a family means that everyone has to work together to support each other.

CORABEL SHOFNER is a wife, mother, attorney, and author. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in English literature and was on Law Review at Vanderbilt University School of Law. Her shorter work has appeared or is forthcoming in Willow Review, Word Riot, Habersham Review, Hawai’i Review, Sou’wester, South Carolina Review, South Dakota Review, and Xavier Review. Almost Paradise is her first novel.

corabelshofner.com