Sitting on Top of the World

Book excerpt: Fourteen-year-old June Baker never in a million years thought she'd be dressing like a boy, sneaking into a hobo camp, and jumping onto a moving freight train to travel across the state of Tennessee. But that's what she has to do to find work so her family's farm can survive. It's what she has to do to fulfill her brother's dying wish. It's 1933, and the Great Depression is tightening its chokehold on working America. Where once June was sitting on top of the world with her beloved brother Joseph (June calls him Josy), now she's carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. Once she was picking fruit from the pawpaw trees, and now she's picking up the pieces of a family torn apart. Once she was climbing and falling from trees, and now she's falling for a boy she should be running from.They were counting on Josy. Now her family's counting on her: daddy, who's grieving losses no father should have to grieve; mama, who's suffering tuberculosis; and even her best friend, Margaret Ann, whose own father was a victim of railroad bulls. June knows she has no choice but to ride the rails, and she knows she'll find work. What she doesn't know is that the railroad bull she falls in love with has a devastating secret that will change the course of her life.Journey with June in this young-adult historical fiction tale about friendship, love, and loss, Sitting on Top of the World.