The Crying Rocks
Janet Taylor Lisle
Paperback
(Gardners Books, Feb. 29, 2004)
Thirteen-year-old Joelle looks like a Native American, a lost princess, according to her unwelcome fan club of eight-year-old worshippers. And it's true that her past is a mystery. Joelle remembers nothing of her life before she was found, a scrawny five-year-old child, alone at a railway depot. But when Carlos, the slightly weird kid from her Spanish class, tells her that she looks like a girl in an old painting of Narragansett Indians, Joelle can't help sneaking a look, and is surprised by the flicker of recognition. It's Carlos who leads her through the forest to the ancient Crying Rocks, where howls on windy days are thought to be the spirit voices of children long ago, flung from the boulders to an early death. This terrible story sparks off memories for Joelle, slowly remembering a window, a shadowy mother, and a train journey to escape...It also leads her to discover the history of a lost American people - and to find a rare kind of courage that runs deep in her family...
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