YoungAdultMag.com

There was a promising glow hovering above the dark eastern horizon that morning as my brother Orville and I pushed our little skiff into the rippling current. We paddled upriver for an hour or more, in search of some cat-fishing. We dropped anchor near a stand of weeping willow trees and baited our hooks.

When 16-year-old Abigail's mother dies in Scotland--leaving a faded photo, a weirdly cryptic letter, and a one-way ticket to America--she feels nothing. Why should she? Her mother gave her away when she was a baby, leaving her to grow up on an anti-nuclear commune and then in ugly foster homes.