A 2020 National Book Award Long List Selection A Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2020 A Reading
Group Choices Best Book of 2020 A Mighty Girl Best Book of 2020In a stunning novel set in the
1980s a girl with heavy secrets awakens her sleepy street to the complexities of love and
courage.It s the summer of 83 on Trowbridge Road and June Bug Jordan is hungry. Months after
her father s death from complications from AIDS her mother has stopped cooking and refuses to
leave the house instead locking herself away to scour at the germs she believes are
everywhere. June Bug threatens this precarious existence by going out into the neighborhood
gradually befriending Ziggy an imaginative boy who is living with his Nana Jean after
experiencing troubles of his own. But as June Bug s connection to the world grows stronger her
mother s grows more distant even dangerous pushing June Bug to choose between truth and healing
and the only home she has ever known.Trowbridge Road paints an unwavering portrait of a girl
and her family touched by mental illness and grief. Set in the Boston suburbs during the first
years of the AIDS epidemic the novel explores how a seemingly perfect neighborhood can contain
restless ghosts and unspoken secrets. Written with deep insight and subtle lyricism by
acclaimed author Marcella Pixley Trowbridge Road demonstrates our power to rescue one another
even when our hearts are broken.
