“Annie Cahill, a high-school sophomore, has moved with her family to an undeveloped suburb, her family having succumbed to the post World War II migration out of cities known as “white flight.” She finds her new surroundings disappointing, and she has no idea how she is going to survive an entire summer friendless and isolated in this wasteland.

A blow-up with her father and a strange dream send the distraught teenager on a mission to find a place of her own. On a nearby mesa, she discovers an abandoned lean-to sheltering a shallow cave, the perfect place for Annie to heal her trauma. All is well, until one day when Annie arrives on the mesa, she is shocked to find that an uninvited guest has taken up residence. The interloper is Clydeen Hollifield, a poverty-stricken Black girl terrified of falling into the hands of state custodians.

In Somewhere Different Now by Donna Peizer, Annie and Clydeen develop a friendship and struggle to navigate the dictates of the racial chasm society has imposed on them. When all seems lost, a former WWII resistance fighter arrives. Who is this stranger, and what does he want? Is he really the kind brotherly figure he appears to be, or is there more to his story than meets the eye? ”

Visit the author’s website: https://donnapeizer.com/