While He Was Away
Gr 9 Up–In the summer before her senior year, while her boyfriend serves in Iraq, Penna tries to stay supportive as she copes with a new job and gets to know her estranged grandmother, a World War II widow. The first-person present-tense narrative, set in small-town Oklahoma, has a surprising and satisfying conclusion.α(c) Copyright 2013.  Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc.  No redistribution permitted.