GINNY MOON

(Paperback)

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Told in an extraordinary and wholly unique voice that will candidly take you into the mind of a curious and deeply human character. For the first time in her life, Ginny Moon has found her "forever home" -- a place where she'll be safe and protected, with a family that will love and nurture her. It's exactly the kind of home that all foster kids are hoping for. So why is this 14-year-old so desperate to get kidnapped by her abusive, drug-addict birth mother, Gloria, and return to a grim existence of hiding under the kitchen sink to avoid the authorities and her mother's violent boyfriends While Ginny is pretty much your average teenager -- she plays the flute in the school band, has weekly basketball practice and studies Robert Frost poems for English class -- she is autistic. And so what's important to Ginny includes starting every day with exactly nine grapes for breakfast, Michael Jackson, bacon-pineapple pizza and, most of all, getting back to Gloria so she can take care of her baby doll. GINNY MOON is a compulsively readable and touching novel about being an outsider trying to find a place to belong and making sense of a world that just doesn't seem to add up. "Ginny Moon is a brilliant debut. In asking us to identify with a developmentally delayed, autistic teenage girl and her peculiar obsession, Ben Ludwig set himself an Olympic degree of difficulty, but he succeeds with the extraordinary Ginny Moon. I was unable to put the book down as I willed her to overcome the obstacles within and around her. Ben Ludwig is a fine observer of human dynamics, and his sometimes dark sense of humor means that the emotional journey, challenging as it is, never becomes wearing. I was mightily impressed--this novel has all the elements for critical and popular success!" --Graeme Simsion, New York Times bestselling author of The Rosie Project

Author Bio

A life-long teacher of English and writing, Benjamin Ludwig lives in New Hampshire with his family. He holds an MAT in English Education and an MFA in Writing. Shortly after he and his wife married they became foster parents and adopted a teenager with autism. The Original Ginny Moon is his first novel, which was inspired in part by his conversations with other parents at Special Olympics basketball practices. His website is available at www.benjaminludwig.com.