First published 2026
Sofia sleeps in the backseat while her mother searches for safe places to park along West Coast freeways. The twelve-year-old girl listens to her mother's promises about getting her own bedroom soon, about returning to school, about buying those bright cakes from grocery store windows. Instead Sofia watches strip malls blur past as her family drives from town to town. Her mother faces choices with no good answers. Sofia encounters strangers who show her both kindness and cruelty. She struggles to understand who she is when her family falls apart around her. Sofia tries to create her own space in a world that offers no permanent place to belong. Her days become a pattern of movement and uncertainty as economic hardship shapes every decision. Sofia must learn what home means when you carry everything you own in a car.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, family-life, contemporary
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, slice-of-life
Setting: West Coast
Period: 21st-century
336 pages · Hardcover · Henry Holt and Co.