Safe Harbor

An uplifting novel in verse about an immigrant girl adjusting to life in the US through her love of nature, music, and poetry, by the award-winning author of The Bridge Home

When Geetha and her mom move from India to Rhode Island after her parents’ divorce, they leave everything Geetha loves behind—her family, her friends, her dog, and all that’s familiar. As if that’s not hard enough, Geetha is made fun of at her new school for her clothes, her food, and her way of speaking English. She finds some solace in playing her flute, and even more when she meets a kid named Miguel who helps her rescue an injured harp seal stranded on the beach. But Geetha can feel her anger building over her helplessness when it comes to careless people who pollute the sea and hurt animals, and her lack of agency over being uprooted. When she and Miguel visit the seal at the Marine Mammal Rehabilitation Center, Geetha can see a lot of parallels between her own struggles and the injured seal’s, and this broadens her understanding of what it means to survive. And her feelings of helplessness start to dissipate when she and Miguel start a beach-clean-up venture, and lots of kids want to help. When the time comes to let the seal go, Geetha is torn, knowing she’ll miss him, but wanting the best for him. She’s learning to live with mixed feelings and accept that while there will always be rough waters, there are plenty of safe harbors too.