Far From the Tree

Grace is a 16-year-old girl and one of the three protagonists in Far from the Tree. At the novel's beginning, Grace gives birth to her first child at her homecoming dance, and she spends most of the novel grappling with her decision to give her baby up for adoption. Grace struggles to pick up the pieces of her life after her unplanned pregnancy. As she thinks about her baby, her birth mother, and her future, Grace must decide how she wants to move forward with her life now that she has been changed forever.

After she gives birth to her daughter, Grace knows that she is “a different person now, and she [will] never be the same Grace again” (7). She falls in love with Peach in a way that permanently alters her life, and Grace finds herself longing for a connection with someone else who shares her DNA. She decides to go looking for her birth mom in hopes of having someone who understands what she has gone through. She believes that if she finds her bio mom, she will find “a woman who had maybe hurt (and maybe was still hurting) like Grace was hurting now” (11).