A brilliant young woman's fight against a debilitating psychological illness is set against the historical events of the Prague Spring and the anti-Soviet struggles in Czechoslovakia. When Jude's mother gets a fellowship to go to Prague to study, Jude's world is thrown into chaos. The teenage girl feels threatened and isolated. It turns out her whole family is going, but still Jude feels adrift. When she arrives in Prague and discovers that their life in the embassy compound is closely circumscribed by rules and regulations and that they are closely watched at all times, she begins to suffer even more. Desperate to break out of the constraints imposed on her and her family, Jude sneaks out one night only to encounter a security crackdown on students and dissenters. Although she makes it home safely, her consciousness continues to deteriorate as she fluctuates in and out of rationality. Only when Jude steals a friend's car and drives into the countryside does the true seriousness of her condition become apparent to her family. Then the long road to recovery begins.

 

This book has been graded for interest at 9-12 years.

There are 217 pages in this book. This book was published 2008 by Front Street Inc .

Kimberley Heuston is a graduate of the Vermont College MFA Program in Writing for Children and Young Adults. A historian by training, she teaches school in Salt Lake City. She is also the author of "The Shakeress," the paperback version of which is on the Spring 2008 list.