Scattergood

"Scattergood is a deeply researched and powerfully moving novel about an Iowa farm girl dealing with life and death in the fraught months leading up to Pearl Harbor. Bouwman doesn’t spare 12-year-old Peggy, whose math genius can’t save her best friend or fix broken war refugees, the pain of loss. Peggy is a character so richly drawn she leaps off the page, and as she learns hard but profound life lessons, her story will touch the hearts of young readers. This novel is truly a masterpiece, emotionally engaging to the last page. I could not put this book down, and cried several times, gasped at others." —Janet Fox, author of Carry Me Home   "H. M. Bouwman writes with so much empathy and respect for both her characters and her readers, giving us a rich and nuanced story of a girl coming of age in a time of personal and global crisis. Immersive, thoughtful, and absolutely gorgeous, Scattergood reads like a classic." —Anne Ursu, National Book Award longlisted author of The Real Boy   "Scattergood has an intensity to it, subtle but raw, that makes its tranquil rural setting burst to life in all its hidden complexity. Peggy's struggle to understand—and to be understood—will resonate with anyone who has felt powerless to control their own small corner of a rapidly-changing world. This thoughtful, bittersweet exploration of friendship, grief, and turbulent times reminds us that the gap between past and present is rarely as large as it seems." —J. Anderson Coats, award-winning author of A Season Most Unfair and The Night Ride   "Scattergood is a perfect poem of a book about a girl who can’t understand poetry and seems to break everything she longs to mend. I think it may be perfect." —Anne Nesbet, California Book Award-winning author of The Long Way Around   "This book—a rectangle of golden proportions itself—sets out to solve for the love and grief of imperfect people in an imperfect and heartbreaking world. It’s a nearly impossible equation, but Bouwman has created something akin to an answer, a kind of comfort that only comes from the very truest of made-up stories. Oh, mercy, there’s a lasting lump in my throat and its name is Scattergood." —Liz Garton Scanlon, New York Times bestselling author of All the World "While Peggy follows the horrors of World War Two remotely, her own grief proves more devastating than news of distant battles. The slow loss of a cancer-stricken friend, the potential dissolution of her parents' marriage, the mistakes made with friends, the accidental maiming she causes–all lead her to appalling questions about herself in a hard world. This is a novel that gives no easy answers, no simple equations; it suggests that life is complex and challenging, that easy answers are illusions. As such, its honesty is as bracing as its prose. Scattergood really is a courageous novel." —Gary D. Schmidt, Newbery Honoree and National Book Award winning author of Okay for Now