The Things We Tend

She grew up somewhere that still knew how to be happy — an orchard, a brook, a mother who sang while she worked and gave the best roses away.

The Things We Tend is the story of everything that comes after: a girl learning that what you love has to be tended or it slips through your fingers, that some people would rather own a thing than care for it, and that staying yourself can be the bravest — and most expensive — thing you ever do.

One girl's fight to stay soft in a world hell-bent on making her hard — to hold on to who she is while everything she loves gets taken from her, one perfectly reasonable excuse at a time.

This is the story of a joyful kid and the quiet, patient war waged to make her small, obedient, and someone else entirely. She does not plan to go quietly.

A story about growing up, holding on, and the brutal little lesson that the things you love don't keep themselves — and neither, if you're not careful, do you.