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Freevibe and HarperCollins are excited to bring you an exclusive excerpt from the new book ESCAPING TORNADO SEASON: A Story in Poems By Julie Williams.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Allie Benton's summer at her grandparents' house in Minnesota is the same as it's always been: northern lights and pine trees, family gossip and root beer floats. She's come here to escape Nebraska's tornado season every summer for as long as she can remember. The only difference is, this time no one's coming to take her back to Nebraska when fall rolls around.

With her father dead, her mother run off to heaven knows where, and her twin brother, seven years buried, just a ghost in her memory, Allie settles in with her grandparents for a cold Minnesota winter. But it's hard to fit in at a new school when her family can't afford to buy her a pair of blue jeans. And, in an ethnically divided community, Allie isn't even allowed to choose the friends she wants-handsome Joey Redfern and Lidia, the beautiful Ojibwe girl who calls Allie my niijikwe, "my friend."

With a strong poetic voice, Julie Williams creates snapshots of Allie piecing a new life together- longing for her mother, grieving for her father, remembering her brother, and struggling to do what's right in an imperfect world. As the people around her come and go, Allie starts to get a sense of who she is, and of what she can hold on to despite the changes in her world.

Read an interview with the author Julie Williams.

Chapter Excerpt

Running For The Storm Cellar

A funnel, someone shouts, a funnel! Get the kids!
  And we are rounded up from where we stand
      watching wild horses gather in the sky
           Run for the storm cellar
              Run fast as we can
             Down we go into the earth
                   huddle together in the
                       light from Daddy’s
                            lantern, sheltered
                               by what’s left of
                              last year’s
                           carrots &
                             potatoes
                              Waiting
                               for the
                                tornado
                                  to blow
                                    over ...

There’s No Escaping Tornado Season

Last month when my dad finally came home
from the hospital, every afternoon
I read to him for an hour or so

Mostly Mom made me read from the Bible
I’d pull my chair up as close as I could get
to where he lay on the bed in my room
but before I even cracked the Bible open
he’d say, You know, Allie, I liked that one
you read from the other day
about that Dorothy girl
her goofy little dog, the yellow brick road
& the big twister ...

It was right there on the night table waiting
The Wizard of Oz, Daddy! I’d say
and open up to the place we left off
the day before

One time Mom walked by
on her way to the bathroom
and when she heard what I was reading
she started in muttering, how she does
about tornadoes & hard times
Your mom’s always trying to escape
tornado season, Allie ...
Daddy said, soon as she was out of earshot
and I nodded, though I wasn’t sure
what he meant

I read some more and then he said
You might as well know now, Allie
there’s no escaping ...

There’s no escaping tornado season.

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