Hamilton’s classic coming-of-age tale: The National Book Award– and Newbery Award–winning novel about a young man who must choose between supporting his tight-knit family and pursuing his own dreams
Mayo Cornelius Higgins perches on top of a homemade forty-foot tower, considering two destinies. Behind him is his family’s beloved house at the foot of a mountain that strip mining has reduced to loose rubble. In front of him, the beautiful Ohio River Valley and the great world beyond.
As M.C. weighs whether to stay with the family and home he loves or set off into the world on his own, there appear on the horizon two strangers who will make his decision all the more difficult.
Virginia Hamilton was born and raised in Yellow Springs, Ohio. She attended Antioch College on a scholarship, and then transferred to Ohio State University in 1956 to study literature and creative writing. In 1958 she moved to New York City where she worked odd jobs, studied fiction writing at the New School for Social Research, and wrote.
Hamilton married in 1960 and became a full-time writer. In 1967 she published her first book, Zeely, published in 1967, which won numerous awards, including the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, and the Hans Christian Andersen Award.
In 1969, Hamilton and her family moved back to Yellow Springs, Ohio. Over the course of career, she published 41 books, largely for children, which included picture books, folktales, mysteries, science fiction, novels, and biographies. She died of breast cancer in 2002.
