Kyleah's Tree

Eleven-year-old Kyleah Ralston, who lost contact with her dad and twin brother at age four when her parents divorced, has lived in a foster home in Kansas since her mother's death and her grandparent's move to assisted living. A loner and a dreamer, Kyleah has learned not to get too close to children who come and go through foster care. Two exceptions are a newborn with fetal alcohol syndrome and thirteen-year-old Benjamin Dorchester. Benjamin asks Kyleah run away with him. He wants to get back to Moose Jaw, Canada where his grandmother lives. Kyleah can stop in Montana and look for her father. "Dumb idea," Kyleah says.Kyeah finds solace in an oak tree in her foster parents' backyard. Because of something her mother once said to her, Kyleah believes that it is because she is ugly that her father doesn't come for her. From her tree-top haven, she wishes to be beautiful so she can be loved. She is forbidden to climb her tree after breaking her leg from a fall, but does anyway when she feels she must get away from the stress of foster living. When Uncle Donald, as she calls her foster father, builds a fence around it, she tells Benjamin she's ready to go.With many harrowing adventures and narrow scrapes with death and the law, the two wend their way northward. In Montana, a cousin of Kyleah's father takes them in-only to exploit their work and talent. It is here that Kyleah learns two things: She is pretty, and beauty does not bring her happiness or the love she craves.In her loneliness, she learns to appreciate what she has left behind. By the end of all the page-turning suspense, Kyleah learns self acceptance and discovers the true meaning of home.