When a car accident leaves a teenage girl in a coma, her surviving sister struggles with grief and guilt as she faces the inevitability of moving on and letting go. To seventeen-year-old Rose, it seems it keeps happening - that car crash on a mountain road, her older sister, Ivy, behind the wheel, the same Ivy who is now in a coma with only the WISHHH of a respirator keeping her alive. Mom refuses to believe that Ivy is gone and won't even visit, spending her days at the brewing factory and her nights in the mindless weaving of potholders or folding of paper cranes. It's up to Rose and family friend William T. to make the daily vigil to Ivy's bedside, where Rose reads aloud from a book on the sudden destruction of ancient Pompeii. More and more, she has the frightening sense that there are rivers inside her threatening to overflow their banks. In an effort to feel something - anything - else, she takes to meeting a series of boys at the gorge while her mind drifts away like a hovering bird, watching her actions below. Heart-rending, honest, and ultimately hopeful, this first young adult novel from the acclaimed author of SHADOW BABY and SNAP is the poetically told story of a teenager overwhelmed by trauma and loss yet steadied by loyal friendships and, finally, the solace of first love.

ALISON MCGHEE is the author of the middle-grade novel SNAP, as well as three critically acclaimed novels for adults: SHADOW BABY, a TODAY SHOW Book Club selection; RAINLIGHT; and WAS IT BEAUTIFUL? She is also the author of two picture books, COUNTDOWN TO KINDERGARTEN and MRS. WATSON WANTS YOUR TEETH, both illustrated by Harry Bliss.

Here is the school bus. Here is the school bus door, chuffing open with its familiar wheeze. Here are the school bus steps. Put your right foot on the bottom one. Haul your left leg up to the next. Here is mean Katie the bus driver, scowling out the big bus window. Here is your backpack, heavy and hurting your shoulders. Where is your sister Ivy who should be behind you, shoving you to hurry up? Ivy is not here. You and your sister had an accident. Now you are on the bus. Walk down the aisle. There's an empty seat. Sit down. Now everyone is on the bus. Now Katie shuts the door and shoves the big black gear stick.

Your first day back is over. The bell that is not a bell has blared, and the school day is over.

Jimmy Wilson is next to you on the old green vinyl seat. Jimmy Wilson, who has been silently in love with you since kindergarten. The bus jolts and bumps and groans and finds its way around the curves of Sterns Gorge. You are back on the bus.

Your sister Ivy and you had an accident.

The world should have stopped, but it didn't.

One month has passed since that day of the accident, the accident that you and your sister were in. One month has passed since that day at the end of March when time plucked you up and set you down again, here in this new place. In that month, Katie the bus driver stopped wearing her Dairylea windbreaker and Jimmy Wilson stopped wearing the fur hat that his uncle brought back from Russia. No more winter boots. No more mittens and scarves. Brown grass is now green. Every class has marched on: Goodbye Romeo and Juliet; hello Hamlet. Goodbye World War II; hello Korea. Goodbye, rudiments of sting theory, and hello chaos complexity.

Your sister Ivy and you had an accident. The world should have stopped, but it didn't. The world kept on going.

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ALL RIVERS FLOW TO SEA by Alison McGhee. Copyright (c) 2005 by Alison McGhee. Published by Candlewick Press, Inc., Cambridge, MA.

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Excerpted from All Rivers Flow to the Sea by Alison McGhee
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