Trowbridge Road

“June Bug narrates this work of historical realism with a magical, poetic quality, turning the ordinary extraordinary. . . .

It’s the summer of ’83 on Trowbridge Road, and June Bug Jordan is hungry. Months after her father’s death from complications from AIDS, her mother has stopped cooking and refuses to leave the house, instead locking herself away to scour at the germs she believes are everywhere. June Bug threatens this precarious existence by going out into the neighborhood, gradually befriending Ziggy, an imaginative boy who is living with his Nana Jean after experiencing troubles of his own. But as June Bug’s connection to the world grows stronger, her mother’s grows more distant—even dangerous—pushing June Bug to choose between truth and healing and the only home she has ever known.

Trowbridge Road paints an unwavering portrait of a girl and her family touched by mental illness and grief. Set in the Boston suburbs during the first years of the AIDS epidemic, the novel explores how a seemingly perfect neighborhood can contain restless ghosts and unspoken secrets. Written with deep insight and subtle lyricism by acclaimed author Marcella Pixley, this 2020 National Book Awards Long List selection demonstrates our power to rescue one another even when our hearts are broken.

About the Author

Marcella Pixley is the author of three highly praised books for young adults that have received multiple starred reviews, including Ready to Fall. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry and earned a master's from Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. She teaches writing to middle-schoolers in Massachusetts, where she lives with her family.