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“I just want everyone to be happy again…”

These were the words spoken by 16 year old, Scarlett Blaine. Those are simple words, but the pain was real. So much had been going on in Scarlett’s young life for so long. Quarrels. A “challenged” brother. A mentally-ill grandfather. School. Responsibilities.

So many things to do, but yet, she still made time to make her little brother’s dream come true. The dream to travel in a rocket ship to Jupiter. Not the Moon, because her brother, Cliff, had just watched Apollo 8 land on the Moon. He wanted to do something different. Something no one else has done, yet. But how was a 16 year old girl, who still went to school and had no job, supposed to pay for the supplies to make her brother a rocket ship?

Peach pies.

She would spend her summer making and selling peach pies. The money will all go toward the material to building the perfect rocket, painted green.

What she didn’t know that summer was her life would be forever changed. Never the same. Empty of what she once knew and took advantage of on a day to day basis.

The book, Chasing Jupiter, is super amazing. It is also the second book written by Rachel Coker, the one who wrote the book, Interrupted: A Life Beyond Words.  I remember receiving the book and finishing it in the same day. I cried and reacted to all the thoughts and changes in the life of Scarlett. It was so relatable.

I laughed at all her brother’s jokes. Felt sorry for all the drama that went on in her daily family life. Cried when disaster struck. Shared the same feeling for the boy who helped make her brother’s dream come true that summer…

This book does have a little more “relationship” between boy and girl than her debut book, Interrupted, but nothing inappropriate; and the lessons of Christianity during the hardest part of Scarlett’s life is completely right on.

I loved meeting Rachel Coker a couple years ago. She is such a wonderful and inspirational young woman. Although I received this book for free, for review purposes, I would have bought this book in no time. I’ll probably be buying her next book, which will be coming out in 2014! (So excited!)

Have you read either one of Rachel Coker’s books?

Find it at Your Library!

Title: Chasing Jupiter
Author: Rachel Coker
Genre: Fiction
Publication: 2013