Amelia Elizabeth Walden Book Award for Young Adult winner

Morris Award winner

Connecticut Nutmeg Children's Book Award nominee

Green Mountain Book Award nominee

Louisiana Young Reader's Choice Award nominee

Oklahoma Sequoyah Young Adult Book Award nominee

Pennsylvania Keystone to Reading Book Award nominee

Tennessee Volunteer State Book Award nominee

Dill has had to wrestle with vipers his whole life—at home, as the only son of a Pentecostal minister who urges him to handle poisonous rattlesnakes, and at school, where he faces down bullies who target him for his father’s extreme faith and very public fall from grace.

He and his fellow outcast friends must try to make it through their senior year of high school without letting the small-town culture destroy their creative spirits and sense of self. Graduation will lead to new beginnings for Lydia, whose edgy fashion blog is her ticket out of their rural Tennessee town. And Travis is content where he is thanks to his obsession with an epic book series and the fangirl turning his reality into real-life fantasy.

Their diverging paths could mean the end of their friendship. But not before Dill confronts his dark legacy to attempt to find a way into the light of a future worth living.

Includes the song “Birds Fly South”, performed by the author and Elin Palmer.