He helped me down, and after he did, he didn’t let go of my hand. There was no intimation that it would happen anytime soon; his grip was stronger than ever before. We paused; the swans on the lake spread their massive wings then and launched powerfully into the sky, creating a white V above us that flew southward until they were just gray specks on the cold horizon.
acknowledgments
Thank you to Jesus Christ, for rescuing me twice and daily—and for making me a writer.
I’m forever indebted to my amazing agent, Steven Chudney, who plucked Truest out of obscurity and gave it a chance. And to my phenomenal editor, Jill Davis, who championed my story and its characters from the moment she met them. Jill, you pushed me past the brink of my own talent and made this novel more than I could have ever imagined. Thank you too to Laurel Symonds for so much help along the way, and to everyone at Katherine Tegen Books and HarperCollins, including Kelsey Horton, Lauren Flower, Ro Romanello, and Alana Whitman. Thank you to Jenna Stempel for the beautiful jacket and to Alexei Esikoff for her careful copyedits and proofreading.
I’m inexplicably grateful to my beta readers: Stacey Anderson, Elyse Kallgren, Tracy Lair, Rachel Larson, Megan Rapp, Mary Roach, Brienna and Melody Rossiter, and Ashley Thorman.
Truest would not be the story it is without Cindy Woerner and Kristin Luehr. You two helped so tremendously that I—who am rarely without words—have none with which to truly express my gratitude. There’s a reason this book is dedicated to you.
Thank you to my parents, Tom and Ronda Sommers, who never batted an eye when I said I wanted to be a writer! Dad and Mom, your support means the world to me. And thank you to Kristin and Kevin, my siblings, for everything: the stories, the laughs, the prayers.
I’m so grateful for my friends—my team—for being my sanity, my backbone, my sounding board, and for giving me a tether from our friendships into plenty of space to write. My team includes many of those whose names I’ve already listed, along with Erica Davis, Desiree Anderson, Brittane Turner, Jessica Willman, Brooke Jameson, Caitlin Leimbach, Dora Von Wald, Chelsea Pederson, and my Voye “sisters,” Emily, Rachel, and Abby.
Thank you to my Northwestern friends for celebrating every step with me—especially Josh Wielgus, Erick Klein, and my “Think Tank” peeps, Matt Anderson, Steve Mattson, Whitney Gerdes, and Sam Fredin. Kyle and Janine Marxhausen, you were two of my biggest encouragers on this crazy journey. Robyn Frank was my prayer warrior, which got me through some anxious weeks. Judy Hougen, Betsy Grams, and Deb Schmidt, you cultivated my love for words and stories, and I’m forever indebted to you.
And, finally, thank you to everyone who reads this novel. It’s a gift from my heart to yours.
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About the Author
Photo by W.Daberkow Photography
JACKIE LEA SOMMERS lives and writes in Minnesota, where the people are nice and the o’s are long. Like West, Jackie grew up in a small town with few secrets, but now she makes her home in the Twin Cities, where she lives more anonymously with all her book boyfriends. She is the 2013 winner of the Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult Writing. Truest is her first novel.
www.jackieleasommers.com
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Credits
Cover photography © 2015 by Jessica Neuwerth Photography/Moment/Getty Images and Ilina Simeonova / Trevillion Images
Cover design and lettering by Jenna Stempel
Copyright
“since feeling is first.” Copyright 1926, 1954, © 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1985 by George James Firmage, from Complete Poems: 1904–1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.
Excerpt from “The First Dream” from The Art of Drowning, by Billy Collins, © 1995. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Excerpt from “somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond” from ViVa by E.E. Cummings. Reissued in Liveright paperback 1997. Copyright © 1931, 1959 by E. E. Cummings Copyright © 1979, 1973 by Nancy T. Andrews Copyright © 1979, 1973 by George James Firmage. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
TRUEST. Copyright © 2015 by Jackie Lea Sommers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.epicreads.com
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sommers, Jackie Lea.
Truest / Jackie Lea Sommers. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: “Westlin Beck’s summer is turned upside down when the Hart twins move to town: aggravating, intriguing, and quirky Silas and his mysteriously ill sister, Laurel”— Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-06-234825-8 (hardback)
EPub Edition © August 2015 ISBN 9780062348272
[1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Twins—Fiction. 3. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 4. Sick—Fiction. 5. Family life—Minnesota—Fiction. 6. Minnesota—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.1.S675Tru 2015 2014047919
[Fic]—dc23 CIP
AC
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15 16 17 18 19 PC/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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