A mind-bending, adventure-filled debut novel with an unusual premise: Nine-year-old Aubry contracts a strange illness that threatens to bleed her to death unless she keeps moving. So she spends her life on the run – constantly running – from one end of the earth to the other, below the earth and above, forever finding new places to go, for she cannot return to places she has been. It’s a fantastical journey that made me ask so many questions: Will she be cured? How does she endure? Why not give up? What a wild ride of a novel!
A Short Walk Through a Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke, (List Price: $28.99, Avid Reader Press, Simon & Schuster, 9781668026069, April 2024)
Reviewed by Cathy Graham, Copperfish Books in Punta Gorda, Florida