The Girl In The Back Of The Room

Laurie Billings is a highly imaginative, precocious high school freshman living in the heartland of the United States in 1961. Five-feet-nine-inches tall and fully developed, she has the appearance of an adult-but inside she is still an immature child prone to tantrums, verbal outbursts, insecurity, and more than the usual teenage angst. But her world turns upside down when she ventures into her grandmother’s attic and discovers her birth certificate…with a different man listed as her father. Has her whole life been a lie? What else has her mother kept from her? Searching for her place in this altered reality, Laurie learns painful truths about herself and the world, more specifically the two junior boys she sits between in the back of her homeroom class. She must sift through appearances, actions, and her own assumptions, as well as those of other people, in order to come to terms with the masks people wear, the truths behind them, and who she wants to be. For fans of Judy Blume, The Girl in the Back of the Room is a thought-provoking coming-of-age story that explores the same complex issues of purpose and self-worth still faced by young people today.