Grace has been working her entire middle grade career to win top scholar at her school. She knows it will impress her writer father who has divorced her mother. But her arch enemy, rival, and former friend, Jonah Perkins, gets the accolade and his name will go on the plaque at school in “Keeping Pace” (Amulet 2024) by Laurie Morrison. At the graduation ceremony, Grace begrudgingly accepts second best, wearing her sister’s three-year-old hand-me-down home-made dress.
Now that it’s summer and she wasn’t accepted into the intensive writing camp she’d applied for, she doesn’t know how she’ll fill the hours. She starts running with her older sister, Celia. She says about the hill, “It doesn’t seem like much of an incline, but slopes feel a lot steeper to your legs and your lungs than they look to your eyes.” In a way, this sums up what Grace will be learning this summer. Life isn’t always as it looks. But the endorphins from the workout are making her feel wonderful.
She decides she’ll run the marathon at the end of summer—something that Jonah and she, years ago, had said they’d one day do. Their friendship grew strained a couple years prior to eighth grade when Jonah’s father died unexpectedly. Jonah started saying mean things about Grace, to his friends. Grace didn’t know what she’d done to deserve this.
Grace’s best friend and cousin, Avery, is hanging out with other girls. It turns out Grace spaced out and missed hearing or caring about a friend’s summer plans. Jade says, “‘I think you’ve missed everything that doesn’t have to do with exams or Jonah Perkins lately,’” Grace has been sparring academically with Jonah, for sure. But next year he’s going to a private school and Grace will sort of miss competing with him. But she can’t stand him!
Grace finds a training program for marathon running on-line and starts a rigorous daily workout which she outlines at the beginning of each chapter. Jonah tags along one day and wants to join her daily run. Grace thinks, Great, then he can win the marathon as well. No way. But over time they run into each other on the trails. We know what is going to happen, but it’s the way it happens gradually, with authenticity, subtlety with sly humor, that grabs us.
Grace is also in touch with her clueless father who is too busy writing to truly care about her, but he thinks she might want to babysit his girlfriend’s three-year-old. “Brie—that’s his girlfriend’s name. Like the cheese. Ironic since Dad is lactose intolerant.” The babysitting job works well, but Dad even botches that.
Along the way, Grace learns that there are more important goals in life than achieving good grades.
Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore. Her forthcoming books are about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, Ella Fitzgerald, as well as poems about waterfowl. talesforallages.com
