Wild Orchid

Shortlisted for Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book of the Year Award2007 Manitoba Young Readers_ Choice Award nominee2007 Saskatchewan Young Readers' Choice Willow Awards nominee Canadian Children's Book Centre Our Choice Starred SelectionMcNally Robinson announced that Wild Orchidwas one of the top five best selling books in Saskatechewan in 2006. Taylor Jane Simon is 18 years old and spending the summer with her mother in Prince Albert National Park. The holiday has been planned so Taylor's mother can spend time with her latest boyfriend, Danny, and work in the pizza restaurant near the park that Danny runs. Taylor would just as soon stay at home in Saskatoon, but because she suffers from an autistic condition called Asperger's Syndrome, she can't stay on her own. Taylor's mother encourages her daughter to explore the park's possibilities on her own. For Taylor, whose life experience has been seriously limited, this means facing the test of meeting new people who work in the park's nature center - and facing it alone. Summer also holds out the possibility of finding her own boyfriend, though Taylor isn't quite sure what that may involve. What she discovers will change her life forever. Written as an epistolary novel, Wild Orchidis frank but optimistic, literal yet innocent. A courageous wit attends Taylor's gradual emergence as her own person, and the reader will find the exploration of Taylor's mind a revealing and heartwarming encounter.