Megan Frazer Blakemoregrew up in a college town in New Hampshire much like the one in her book Very in Pieces. She attended Columbia University, where she earned a degree in English. After brief stints in the Peace Corps and the television industry, she pursued a master's in library science at Simmons School of Library and Information Science. She has over ten years' experience as a librarian and has taught writing to students in elementary through graduate school. She lives in Maine with her husband, two children, a cat, and two hives of bees. She is the author of books for teens and young readers, including Secrets of Truth & Beauty, an Indie Next Kids' Pick; The Water Castle, which was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year; The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill; and Good and Gone.
In this coming-of-age novel perfect for fans of Susane Colasanti and Jandy Nelson, a straight-A student in a family of free-spirited artists must face the hard truths about those she loves most.
Very Sayles-Woodruff could find the value of x with her eyes closed . . . but interpreting her mother's renowned paintings or her famous grandmother's poems don't come as easily. Even her younger sister, Ramona, has the same artistic leanings as the rest of their family. Very has always been the dependable, responsible one?until her grandmother becomes terminally ill, causing all of the pieces of Very's once-structured life to come crashing down. Now she's cast aside her steady boyfriend and started an unexpected fling with Dominic, a rebellious art student with a bad reputation.
Things at home have also taken a turn. Very's mother drinks all day, her father is never around, and Ramona is constantly skipping school. And that's when the sculpture appears. Out of nowhere, a bottle cap design starts climbing up the stucco walls of the Sayles-Woodruff house, mysteriously growing by the day. With her grandmother nearing death and things heating up with Dominic, Very also has to confront the fact that the person behind the sculpture is struggling more than she could have imagined.