First published 1994
Moss watches the strange pale visitors prepare for their harvest celebration in the Massachusetts woods he has known all his life. The Algonquin boy stands at the edge of childhood, wrestling with questions that have no easy answers. His sister Trouble shares his confusion as their familiar world shifts around them. The arrival of these newcomers forces both siblings to confront what it means to grow up when everything they understood about their place in the world suddenly feels uncertain. Their elders speak of cooperation and survival, but Moss sees the deeper changes coming. As the first Thanksgiving approaches, he must decide who he wants to become in this new reality. The celebration that history will remember as a moment of unity becomes for Moss and Trouble a painful passage into a more complicated understanding of their world and themselves.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, coming-of-age, 21st-century, native-american
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, found-family
Setting: Massachusetts
Period: First Thanksgiving
96 pages · Hardcover · Little, Brown Books for Young Readers