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Meet Ginny Moon.
She’s mostly your average teenager—she plays flute in the school band, has weekly basketball practice and reads Robert Frost poems for English class. But Ginny is autistic. And so what’s important to her might seem a bit...different: starting every day with exactly nine grapes for breakfast, Michael Jackson, taking care of her baby doll and crafting a Big Secret Plan of escape.
Ginny has been in foster care for years, and for the first time in her life, she has found her “forever home”—a place where she’ll be safe and protected, with a family who will love and nurture her. Though this is exactly the kind of home that all foster kids are hoping for, Ginny has other plans. She’ll steal and lie and reach across her past to exploit the good intentions of those who love her—anything it takes to get back what’s missing in her life. She’ll even try to get herself kidnapped.
Told in an extraordinary and wholly original voice, Ginny Moon is at once quirky, charming, bighearted, poignant and yet also heartbreaking and a bit dark. It’s a story of a journey, about being an outsider trying to find a place to belong and about making sense of a world that just doesn’t seem to add up.
A lifelong teacher of English and writing, Benjamin Ludwig lives in New Hampshire with his family. He holds an MAT in English Education and an MFA in Writing. Shortly after he and his wife married, they became foster parents and adopted a teenager with autism. GINNY MOON is his first novel, which was inspired in part by his conversations with other parents at Special Olympics basketball practices. His website is available at www.benjaminludwig.com.
“Ludwig is a fine observer of human dynamics.... I was mightily impressed—this novel has all the elements for critical and popular success!”
—GRAEME SIMSION
“You will love this novel.... Ludwig paints in every color with ferocity and ultimately, joy.... This is a book to savor and share with everyone you know.”
—ADRIANA TRIGIANI
“Ludwig gives us a remarkable heroine in Ginny Moon, writing poignantly and yet starkly believably from an autistic girl’s point of view.” —MELANIE BENJAMIN
“There is no guessing where Ginny Moon is going to take us in this page-turning, surprising, funny, heartbreaking, at times disturbing, and ultimately morally complex story.”
—EOWYN IVEY
“Ludwig’s novel is a genuine and touching debut; Ginny Moon is a wonderful and memorable heroine.”
—DAN CHAON
“Ginny had me wrapped around her little finger from the first page, and I’d have stayed under her spell for a book twice as long.”
—REBECCA MAKKAI
“A heartwarming but refreshingly honest story about the making of an American family, told by a character who is, indeed, original—and impossible not to love.”
—RUMAAN ALAM
“Ludwig does such a wonderful job of conjuring Ginny onto the page and of making us turn those pages at breathless speed.”
—MARGOT LIVESEY
“Ludwig creates a startling, powerful voice in Ginny Moon, a character who lingers well beyond the pages.”
—ERIKA SWYLER
“Artfully rendered, heartbreaking, funny and suspenseful, Ginny Moon is a veritable smorgasbord of a read.”
—JOHN LESCROART
“Ludwig shares a story that will have readers cheering for Ginny, fearing for her and wanting to reach inside the pages of this poignant novel to guide and protect her.”
—LORI ROY
“Ginny Moon is both honest and raw. Ludwig gives voice to the voiceless.”
—ALEXI ZENTNER
For my wife, Ember, whose heart was open.
Contents
6:54 AT NIGHT, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7TH
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EXACTLY 6:57 IN THE MORNING, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14TH
EXACTLY 3:31 IN THE AFTERNOON, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14TH
EXACTLY 10:05 IN THE MORNING, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15TH