Selling Hope

Book excerpt: Selling Hope is an inventive middle grade novel about a girl who wants a normal life and how she sees Halley's Comet as her ticket out of the vaudeville circuit. It's May 1910, and Halley's Comet is due to pass thru the Earth's atmosphere. And thirteen-year-old Hope McDaniels and her father are due to pass through their hometown of Chicago with their ragtag vaudeville troupe. Hope wants out of vaudeville, and longs for a "normal" life -- or as normal as life can be without her mother, who died five years before. Hope sees an opportunity: She invents "anti-comet" pills to sell to the working-class customers desperate for protection. Soon, she's joined by a fellow troupe member, young Buster Keaton, and the two of them start to make good money. And just when Hope thinks she has all the answers, she has to decide: What is family? Where is home? “[An] oft-engaging, pleasantly romantic romp through a fascinating time in America's entertainment history.” —Kirkus Reviews