It's 1949 in Tennessee Smoky Mountain-country, and everything in twelve-year-old Salina's life seems suddenly different. Her sister is engaged, her brother Paul is absorbed in caring for his foal, Sugar-Boy, and Salina feels she has nothing in common anymore with her best friend. This novel for young people captures the insular spirit of the mountain people, the breathtaking country itself, and a girl's struggle to accept the inevitability of change.
"Alana White's classic novel Come Next Spring is as fresh and moving as when I first read it many years ago. Its mountain setting is evocative and faithfully rendered, and its theme-a lively adolescent girl's difficulty accepting inevitable change in her life-is even more important today. Salina will steal a piece of your heart."
Lee Smith, bestselling author of Fair and Tender Ladies
"This finely crafted first novel engagingly depicts early adolescent feelings. All the events in the story occur between the first day of school and Christmas, in a year when Salina Harris moves beyond her concerns for popularity to an unfolding friendship with an unwelcome newcomer. It is well paced, building to a dramatic climax; it creates a strong sense of time and place; and the novel include
