The Return of Calico Bright — David Winkler

An epic coming-of-age story

She suspects her boyfriend of cheating and her best friend of betrayal. But that's not the worst of sixteen-year-old Callie Weston's sorrows. The unveiling of not just one but two of her mother's deceptions has driven Callie to despair. With an unlikely companion, she heads off into the wild and beautiful Madras Mountains to capture the spirit of her great-great-
great-great-grandmother Calico Bright, a nineteenth-century frontierswoman and family legend. But in so doing, she gets more than she bargains for and discovers Calico Bright in the unlikeliest of places.

The Return of Calico Bright forces its protagonist to confront not only her own adolescent sorrows but the seamy underbelly of a nation's identity, in which racial hatred lurks in surprising places. The stakes are high and the outcome critical, but in the crucible of raw experience Callie emerges from her ancestor's heroic shadow in ways she never would have imagined.