about the book
Sisters Tilly, a freshman, and Roo, a senior, are devoted to each other and have become even closer since their father passed away last year.
Roo, a genius headed for an ivy-league school, is late one day to pick Tilly up. Impatient, Tilly spam texts Roo to hurry up. Unfortunately, Roo decides to respond to one of those texts and ends up crashing her car to avoid a woman with her dog. Confined to a hospital bed, Roo is paralyzed but aware of her surroundings. Silently, Roo watches as friends and loved ones talk about her and discuss her situation while assuming she is in a coma. No one knows she’s trapped inside.
Tilly discovers that her initial texts were linked to Roo’s accident. Believing she is responsible for the accident, Tilly visits her sister regularly and talks to her as though she can hear. When Roo rolls her eyes, Tilly realizes she can communicate. Her doctors call it “lock-in” syndrome: she’s aware of her surroundings but unable to communicate. Working with doctors, Roo finds a way to talk and express what she’s thinking. Roo is furious with Tilly because of what happened and their relationship deteriorates.
Wracked with guilt, Tilly also finds herself increasingly attracted to Newton, Roo’s boyfriend. Can she find a way to help her sister and deal with her own sense of guilt?
about the author
Young readers, your parents are probably going to be really mad at me for saying this, but Luanne Rice is proof that maybe college isn’t for everyone. Luanne quit college to write books full-time. This doesn’t mean, of course, that she quit learning or working at her craft. She worked hard, much like a graduate student does at their studies. She dedicates time to research the details of her novels and keeps a pretty strict writing schedule.
Her first book was published when she was 29 years old and today she has over 30 novels under her belt. Several of her novels have been made into movies, such as “Crazy in Love” for TNT, “Blue Moon” for CBS, and “Silver Bells” for the Hallmark Hall of Fame. Her cumulative work earned her an honorary doctorate degree from St. Joseph College in West Hartford, Connecticut. (So, technically she did earn a college degree.)
Luanne grew up in Connecticut with two other sisters and a mother who was a writer. She remembers falling asleep to the sounds of her mother tapping away at her typewriter. During the summers, her mother would give Luanne and her sisters special writing time to explore their creativity. Luanne became a writer and her two sisters are artists.
Luanne considers writing, especially writing for children, “a very special calling.” It is not easy to be a writer, she says. “…You have to be your own best support system because you don’t have the same feedback and the same encouragement that people get in a job at an office because you’re really on your own.”
After her mother died, Luanne bought the family house in Old Lyme, Connecticut, and still sometimes writes at the same table where she was given her first writing lessons. Luanne, her hockey-loving husband Bob, and step-son Rob currently split their time between Connecticut and New York City.
Sources:
Author website
Author biography: Amazon
Author interview: The January Magazine
Author interview: Book Reporter
Book trailer: The Secret Language of Sisters
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