Brooke Carnwath received a BA from Middlebury College and an MA in journalism from the University of Montana. Since then, she has authored one picture book, two novels for young readers, and a creative non-fiction project about the Yoga Sutras, which received an honorable mention in Hay House Publishing’s 2024 book contest. Her flash fiction has appeared in Women On Writing and in the Elk River Writers Workshop anthology Voices Elevated. She teaches writing at Montana State University and lives in Bozeman, Montana.

Growing up on a remote island with her mother, twelve-year-old Skye is endlessly curious about the natural world—tracking tides, seabirds, starfish—and dreams of becoming a marine biologist. But more than anything, she longs to reunite with the father she’s never met and finally feel her family is complete.

When her summer takes an unexpectedly turn and she and her mother travel across the country to care for her ailing grandparents, Skye realizes that opportunity may be closer than she ever imagined. She has spent years collecting clues from her mother’s reluctant disclosures, and she is nearly certain her father still lives in her mom’s hometown.

Wide-open Wyoming is nothing like Skye’s seaside home in Maine: Instead of fishing dinghies and flip-flops, she finds horses, cowboy boots, and dusty rodeo arenas. As she navigates this unfamiliar world, Skye befriends nine-year-old Tuck Foster, who eagerly helps her investigate a list of possible father candidates that fit Skye’s clues. Along the way, she cheers on bull riding, mucks stalls, shoos chickens, and learns to saddle and ride horses. She also grows close her kind-hearted grandmother and curmudgeonly grandfather, who teach her lessons about family, home, grit, and resilience.

In her final days out West—and on the verge of uncovering the truth—Skye discovers what completes a family isn’t a specific place, size, or way of life. It’s love.