Kindle Edition
Amazon
Category:
Children
ISBN-10: 1539101762
Type: Fiction
Pages: 164
Copyright: Sept. 26, 2016
ISBN-13: 9781539101765
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
Christmas Tree Acres is about a sixth grade girl who escapes from a bad foster care situation. She survives being temporarily homeless, then ends up with Gracie, an elderly woman who lives on a retired tree farm.
Cranberry Wilkes had a great family, but they trickled away due to sad events. Her parents died in a fire, then her grandmother died of cancer, as did the woman she had handpicked to raise Cranberry after she died.
Life in foster care is tough on Cranberry, as she is first placed with a woman who punishes her by snipping off chunks of her hair. After that, she goes to a family in which the dad has a terrible temper, and he breaks her front tooth.
She sneaks away and goes to Hammer, a homeless man who works accepting goods on a charity truck. He helps her, but presses her to call her social worker so she can get a new placement.
Sadly, she ends up losing Hammer, and is placed back into foster care. The woman her social worker finds for her is, technically, too old to be a foster parent, but the social worker decides Cranberry needs a break, and Gracie is someone special.
At Christmas Tree Acres, Gracie's retired tree farm, Cranberry thrives, until a greedy man seeks to steal some money that has come her way. This put Gracie in danger, and Cranberry has to save her with the help of a kindly teacher, and Hammer's benign presence as a ghost / guardian angel.
Excerpt
An hour or so later, Cranberry rode with her social worker out into the country.
“We’ve been looking for you, you know.” Cilla Chang had been Cranberry’s social worker for the past three years. She seemed to be a decent person, but Cranberry didn’t trust her, not after the two bad homes Cilla had placed her in after Gloria died.
“The Horners reported me missing?”
Cilla shook her head. “No. One of your
teachers said you hadn’t been to school, and, when we asked, the Horners said you’d run off. We got a call from a woman who said she’d seen a girl that sounded like you in the food court at the mall. She was worried because your face was bruised and your tooth looked like it had been recently broken. She said she could see where it had cut into your lip.”
Cranberry looked down. “I ate her leftover food.”
“She didn’t say that, but who can blame you? Listen, you’ve had a tough time of it. That’s why I’m taking you to Christmas Tree Acres, even though the lady who lives there isn’t registered with the county.”
They pulled into a long driveway. This is going to be just great, Cranberry thought, eying a chicken coop and a barn. Years ago, when her grandmother had been alive, she would have loved the idea of a farm, but now she just imagined herself doing endless smelly chores in the mud and chilly weather.
They drove by a sign. The moon was bright and Cranberry could read it.
“Christmas Tree Acres, just like you said,” she told Cilla. “But why does the farm have a name? That seems kind of fancy.” Cranberry felt a twinge of hope. So far, her foster homes, after Gloria had died, had been small and dirty.
“It used to be a working Christmas tree farm, but now it’s just Mrs. Sullivan. I don’t think she has anyone harvest or sell the trees any more.”
“This would be so pretty if it was snowing.” Now that Cilla had told Cranberry about the Christmas trees—it had never occurred to her that anyone farmed them, like a crop—she saw how the property was surrounded by them. They had been planted in rows.
“It’s a snug, lovely place. Lots of room to play outside and a large, comfortable house. Mrs. Sullivan doesn’t usually take girls, but when I told her about you, she insisted I bring you right away.”
“I’ll bet she takes boys so they can work on the farm.” Even if they weren’t selling trees, Cranberry figured there would be plenty to do taking care of the animals, cutting the grass—lots of back-breaking work.
Cilla laughed. “Now, that’s a pretty old-fashioned idea although, years and years ago, farmers would take orphans in for that reason. No, ma’am. She’s got farm hands for that. Every year around Christmas, she takes one child. By the end of the next year, every child she has taken in has fallen into fortune. Not financial fortune, necessarily, but good things have happened to them.”
|
