Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
“My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die. I counted. It happened on the Jellicoe Road. The Prettiest road I’d ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tunnel to Shangri-la."
The story of Taylor Markham, a 17 year old who was abandoned years ago on the Jellicoe Road and lives in a boarding school in the Australian countryside. It is her story of how she discovers the missing pieces of her life, and begins to make sense of all the decisions that others have made to benefit her. The story switches times, from days gone by at the school to present times where the different rival groups negotiate for territory surrounding the school and town. Highly Recommend. A good book for 8th-12 grade.
From Booklist
Taylor Markham isn’t just one of the new student leaders of her boarding school, she’s also the heir to the Underground Community, one of three battling school factions in her small Australian community (the others being the Cadets and the Townies). For a generation, these three camps have fought “the territory wars,” a deadly serious negotiation of land and property rife with surprise attacks, diplomatic immunities, and physical violence. Only this year, it’s complicated: Taylor might just have a thing for Cadet leader Jonah, and Jonah might just be the key to unlocking the secret identity of Taylor’s mother, who abandoned her when she was 11. In fact, nearly every relationship in Taylor’s life has unexpected ties to her past, and the continual series of revelations is both the book’s strength and weakness; the melodrama can be trying, but when Marchetta isn’t forcing epiphanies, she has a knack for nuanced characterizations and punchy dialogue. The complexity of the backstory will be offputting to younger readers, but those who stick it out will find rewards in the heartbreaking twists of Marchetta’s saga. Grades 9-12.
