Leaving Woodstock

Accompanied by a goldfish named Gertrude and the ghost of her recently deceased mother, a grieving 16-year-old embarks upon a 925-mile journey from Woodstock, Georgia, to find her absentee father at a soon-to-be legendary music festival in the summer of 1969.

A sweeping coming-of-age novel about loss, resilience, and the messy, beautiful road to belonging for readers of Kristy Woodson Harvey, Donna Everhart, Jessica Anya Blau, and Sue Monk Kidd.

At her mother’s funeral, 16-year-old Emma Joy decides there isn’t enough room in Woodstock, Georgia, for both her and her grief. There’s certainly not enough room among the mean girls at the foster home where she’s headed if she can’t find a blood relative to take her in.

She hasn’t seen her tomcatting, guitar-playing daddy since he walked out 10 years before, but her mama used to say he could always be found around loud music and loose women. There’s bound to be plenty of both at the music festival where thousands of people are expected to gather 5 days from now. And so, accompanied by a goldfish named Gertrude and the occasional visit from her mama’s ghost, she embarks upon a 925-mile journey toward Woodstock, New York.

As she is swept through a country grappling with change and revolution, Emma Joy finds unlikely allies, faces mounting obstacles, and is tailed by her mother’s sometime boyfriend, Sheriff Mosby. But the greatest discoveries are to come at that epicenter of peace and love, where what she finds amid the mud and music will give her the courage to carry both her grief and her grit into the future.