<p>Twelve-year-old Joan is sure that she is going to hate her new home-but almost right away she finds a kindred spirit.</p><p>'You're lucky I didn't just start throwing rocks at you. I can hide in the trees and nail a kid with a rock from thirty feet away.' That's Sarah who prefers to be called 'Fox' who lives with her writer father in a rundown house in the middle of the woods-near Joan's suburb but it feels like a totally different world.</p><p>Joan and Sarah-Newt and Fox-spend all their spare time outside and soon start writing stories together. When they win a contest they're recruited for a summer writing class taught by a free spirit named Verla Volante. 'Verla said that you need to open a door so that people can walk into your world. . . . To do that you have to pay attention.'</p><p><i>The Wild Girls</i> is about friendship the power of story and how growing up means finding your own answers-rather than simply taking adults on faith.</p>