The Art of Dumpster Diving
From award-winning author Jennifer Anne Moses comes an incredible story of the power of family, love, and the human spirit. Sixteen-year-old James and his little brother Danny live in Crystal Springs, Louisiana, with their grandmother, mother, and first cousin Lila. The family is working class, proud, strict, and church-going. When Grandma dies and Lila runs away, their mother struggles to keep things together — until one awful day, James finds her lying in her bed, dead. Panicked, he runs to his only friend Gabriel, who convinces James that if the authorities find out they're alone, the brothers will be split up in foster care. What follows is a desperate, darkly comic, ultimately life-affirming story of two brothers fighting to stay together and find their way home.
"The Art of Dumpster Diving packs a wallop. Two brothers are orphaned in Louisiana, in the mystical, often shady town of Crystal Springs. Their fight to stay together despite trauma, abandonment, and death is at turns poignant and hilarious. Jennifer Anne Moses is a wonder, an author who can conjure the worst and yet bring the story into the light, and with it, her reader. Glorious storytelling in an authentic voice."
— Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author of Big Stone Gap
"A moving and heart-felt story of family and community, and the symbiotic ways the two can shape and sustain one another."
— Jo Watson Hackl, Author of Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe, Southern Book Prize winner
"An emotionally powerful story of family and a strong familial bond that preserves hope in a moment of hardship and adversity."
— Shelf Unbound
"This dialogue-driven exploration of coming of age in a small town in Louisiana will have readers asking for more. While horrible things happen, it is ultimately an uplifting look at coming to grips with reality and coming home — wherever that is and whomever that's with."
— School Library Journal