Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 05/01/2017 Gr 5–8—The definition of family and one young girl's struggle to find out who she really is take center stage in Wolk's follow-up to her Newbery Honor book, Wolf Hollow. As long as she can remember, Crow has lived her whole life on the sleepy island of Cuttyhunk, part of the Elizabeth Islands off the coast of Massachusetts. When she was a baby, only days old, a lonely fisherman named Osh found her moored on the rocks after being set adrift in a shabby rowboat. The only place Crow could have safely come from and still survived the boat trip is the neighboring island of Penikese, whose sole occupants were the patients and staff of a leper colony. Many of the townspeople avoid Crow like the plague, assuming that she carries the disease despite exhibiting no physical symptoms. Even though Crow is loved by her adoptive father and their kind and helpful neighbor Miss Maggie, she is determined to discover where she comes from and (hopefully) locate her birth family. Wolk's writing is lyrical and heartrending. Her impeccable research of the area during the 1920s (described in a lengthy author's note) is on full display. Crow, Osh, and Miss Maggie are fully fleshed-out characters who jump off the page. Wolk strikingly conveys the intense feelings of hope and anxiety Crow and Osh experience, respectively, as Crow sets out to track down her birth family. This is a tear-jerking yet ultimately uplifting tale of establishing one's place in the world and realizing that sometimes your family is the one you make, not the one you are born into. VERDICT A stellar story full of heart, action, and emotion that will make readers feel like they are a part of Crow's family.—Christopher Lassen, BookOps: The New York Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library - Copyright 2017 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 05/15/2017 *Starred Review* Crow was a mere baby when she drifted to the shore of one of the Elizabeth Islands off the coast of Massachusetts in the first quarter of the twentieth century. She has since grown up with the painter Osh as her stand-in father; their only other friend is Maggie, who teaches Crow. Nearby Penikese Island was home to a leper colony at the time of Crow’s birth, and most of the island folk assume her birth parents were lepers and shun her. Now a 12-year-old and uncertain of her parentage, Crow becomes increasingly curious following a fire on the now supposedly vacant Penikese. Where did she really come from? What happened to her parents, and is there a chance she has any surviving blood relatives? Crow’s quest for answers as she grapples with her uncertain identity shapes the 2017 Newbery Honor Book author’s sophomore novel. While this quiet, affecting story lacks the palpable sense of dread and superb pacing that made Wolf Hollow (2016) so impossible to put down, there’s still plenty to admire in this more classic-feeling historical novel, which calls to mind Natalie Babbitt’s The Eyes of the Amaryllis (1977). Wolk has a keen sense for the seaside landscape, skillfully mining the terror the ocean can unleash as a furious nor’easter heightens tension in the novel’s climax. Historical fiction fans awaiting her follow-up will be pleased. - Copyright 2017 Booklist.