Book Description: Fifteen-year-old Ann doesn’t have much choice in the matter: It’s live with the maternal grandparents she’s never met in Kansas or go to a foster home when her father is found by the courts to be a neglectful parent. Still, she’s positive it’s only for the summer of 1989 and her father will make good on his promise to get a steady job and provide a stable home life for her. At Sunflower Lane, Ann discovers she strongly resembles the mother she never knew and that everyone from her strict grandmother to her more understanding grandfather avoids talking about her mother. Ann’s vivid imagination conjures up numerous explanations for this silence, fueled by her voracious reading and subtle clues that accumulate over the months. She finds herself torn between learning the answers to her questions and dreading what they might be. When Grandpa gifts her an old edition of Anne of Green Gables, Ann immediately identifies with the title character, especially when her father fails to make good on his promise to get her back. The weeks and months unfold at Sunflower Lane, and along the way, Ann makes a best friend for the first time in Corrie Addair and finds a temptingly handsome challenge to her grandmother’s “no boys” rule in Corrie’s brother, Cameron. As Ann integrates herself into the fabric of life at Sunflower Lane, she meets a community that broadens her notions of home, family, friendship, and love. When she uncovers a difficult truth about her past, the consequences could be life-altering.
Julie A. Sellers was born and raised in the Flint Hills near the small town of Florence, Kansas. Those great expanses of tallgrass prairie and reading fueled her imagination, and Julie began writing at an early age. After living in several states and countries, Julie is happy to make her home in Atchison, KS. She has published three academic books, and her creative prose and poetry have appeared in publications such as 105 Meadowlark Reader, Cagibi, Wanderlust, The Very Edge, and Kansas Time + Place. Julie was the Kansas Author’s Club Prose Writer of the Year in 2020 and 2022. In the Kansas Voices Contest, she was the Overall Poetry Winner (2022) and the Overall Prose Winner (2017, 2019). Her collection Kindred Verse: Poems Inspired by Anne of Green Gables (Blue Cedar Press) was released in 2021. Ann of Sunflower Lane (Meadowlark Press, 2022) is her debut novel.
