Dot to Dot

Dorothy Mary-Jane, or "Dot," is an ordinary twelve year old girl with ordinary problems until she sees her mother killed by an errant red truck. The memories won't go away; Dot lies down on her ratty Tinkerbell rug and swears she'll never leave it. Her unpredictable Aunt Tab swoops Dot off to London, saying England is the place to sort out Dot's life. Aunt Tab secretly packs Dot's mother's ashes. Dot packs Tinkerbell along with Dancing on the Edge, a silk collage embroidered by her mother with cryptic lessons from the three famous historical English women Dot is named after. Before she can discover their meaning, however, Dot is appalled by the preponderance of large red trucks in England, by Aunt Tab's unexpected agenda with the ashes, and by an unpleasant but interesting English boy named Nick. Reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Dot finds the past increasingly intrusive, Aunt Tab increasingly irritating and Nick increasingly present. Dot has to decide whether or not to run away with Nick. As she makes her decision, she packs the richness of the past into her own future without her mother. Note: The three historical English women are Dorothy Wordsworth, sister and muse of the great Romantic poet William Wordsworth; Mary Wollstonecraft, author of the radical Vindication of the Rights of Woman and mother of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein and runaway teenage wife of the revolutionary poet Shelley; and Jane Austen, author of Pride and Prejudice and five other perennially popular novels. Time travel is involved. Also tarot cards.