Wish You Well by David Baldacci (2001, Paperback)

Synopsis
Set in the 1940s, WISH YOU WELL tells the story of 12-year-old Louisa May Cardinal's coming of age. Born and raised in the Big Apple, Louisa is sent to live with her grandmother in the Appalachians after her father is killed in a car accident. The Virginia mountain folk teach Louisa rustic values, but Baldacci throws some trademark elements of action and suspense into his homespun tale. When evil businessmen come around, looking to exploit the land for profit, high-speed car chases and a dramatic courtroom climax result.

Key Details
Author:	David Baldacci
Language:	English
Publisher:	Grand Central Pub
Format:	Paperback
ISBN-10:	0446610100
ISBN-13:	9780446610100

Size
Length:	370 pages
Thickness:	1 in
Weight:	6.4 oz

Publisher's Note
David Baldacci has always delivered great stories, authentic characters, and thought-provoking ideas since he burst on the literary scene with Absolute Power. Now this versatile writer movingly evokes the charms of rural America as he makes us believe in the great and little miracles that can change lives -- or save them.

Precocious twelve-year-old Louisa Mae Cardinal lives in the hectic New York City of 1940 with her family. Then tragedy strikes -- and Lou and her younger brother, Oz, must go with their invalid mother to live on their great-grandmother's farm in the Virginia mountains. Suddenly Lou finds herself coming of age in a new landscape, making her first true friend, and experiencing adventures tragic, comic, and audacious. But the forces of greed and justice are about to clash over her new home...and as their struggle is played out in a crowded Virginia courtroom, it will determine the future of two children, an entire town, and the mountains they love.

In 1940, tragedy forces Lou, her little brother Oz, and their invalid mother to leave New York and move to the mountains of southwestern Virginia to live with their great-grandmother, Louisa Mae Cardinal, but a climatic courtroom battle could determine the fates of the entire family and all those who have been touched by them. Reprint.

In 1940, tragedy forces Lou, her little brother Oz, and their invalid mother to move to the mountains of southwestern Virginia to live with their great-grandmother, but a courtroom battle could determine the fates of the entire family.

Industry Reviews
"I might say about this novel what another reviewer said about one of mine: The author threw in everything but the kitchen sink, and a second reading would probably turn up the sink as well. But that is not necessarily bad. Baldacci is a commercial novelist who knows how to stir the pot. If WISH YOU WELL is not literature, neither is it ever dull."
Washington Post - Patrick Anderson (11/13/2000)

"A little slow but nearly always engaging, WISH YOU WELL is an honorable and solid effort by the author to break out of his genre origins into something more rounded and substantial."
Chicago Tribune Books - Chris Petrakos (02/04/2001)