Critics' Opinion:
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Published Jun 2014
384 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
In her sixteen years of life, Starbird has never touched a dollar bill. She's never been in a car. She's never used a cell phone.
That's because Starbird has always lived on the Free Family Farm, a commune in the woods of Washington State.
But all that is about to change. When Starbird gets her "Calling" to be a waitress at the Free Family's restaurant in Seattle, she decides to leave behind the only home she's ever known.
Nothing could have prepared Starbird for the World Outside, or for what it would teach her about the Family - and herself.
From the author of The Sweet Revenge of Celia Door comes this hilarious and poignant story about finding your true calling in life.
"Starred Review. Readers will feel like they're experiencing every step of Starbird's eye-opening journey firsthand." - Publishers Weekly
"Finneyfrock deftly uses Starbird's new life in high school to weave in the history of American cults and communal living to place Starbird's story within a larger context. Readers from all walks of life will likely identify with this story's overarching themes of questioning faith and authority and the building of family. Grade 8 and up." - School Library Journal
"In the hands of poet Finneyfrock, Starbird gradually and realistically finds her inner voice emerging from a controlled mind.Both Starbird and readers will expand their worlds." - Kirkus
This information about Starbird Murphy and the World Outside was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Karen Finneyfrock is a poet, novelist, and teaching artist. She is a writer-in-residence at Richard Hugo House in Seattle, Washington, and teaches for Seattle Arts and Lectures' Writers-in-the-Schools program. In 2010, Karen traveled to Nepal as a Cultural Envoy through the US Department of State to perform and teach poetry and in 2011, she did a reading tour in Germany sponsored by the US Embassy. She has published two books of poetry and one young adult novel, The Sweet Revenge of Celia Door
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