Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

First published: 1994

Subjects: Coming-of-age, death, family, and friendship

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Psychological realism

Time of work: The 1990’s

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: Euclid, Ohio; Bybanks, Kentucky; and various places along the route between Ohio and Lewiston, Idaho

Principal Characters:

• Salamanca (“Sal”) Tree Hiddle, a thirteen-year-old struggling with her mother’s disappearance
• Chanhassen (“Sugar”) Pickford Hiddle, Sal’s mother
• John Hiddle, Sal’s father
• Gran Hiddle, and
• Gramps Hiddle, Sal’s grandparents, with whom she is traveling
• Phoebe Winterbottom, Sal’s friend
• Norma Winterbottom, Phoebe’s mother
• Margaret Cadaver, John Hiddle’s friend and Phoebe’s neighbor
• Mrs. Partridge, Margaret Cadaver’s mother, who leaves notes on Phoebe’s doorstep
• Ben Finney, Sal’s friend

Form and Content

Walk Two Moons is a story within a story. Salamanca Tree Hiddle entertains her unique and charming grandparents on a trip from Ohio to Idaho with the story of Phoebe Winterbottom. Sal’s story about her experiences with Phoebe is intermingled with her first-person narrative of the trip’s events. Sharon Creech presents a deeply moving story told in a simple, straightforward fashion liberally sprinkled with picturesque phrases.

Sal’s mother left their farm in Bybanks, Kentucky, in April; a short time later, they learned that she is never returning. Unable to bear the memories that the farm evoked, Sal’s father moves them to a small house in Euclid, Ohio, where he sells farm machinery and, to Sal’s resentment, spends much of his spare time with his friend Margaret Cadaver. Phoebe Winterbottom, Margaret’s next-door neighbor, soon becomes Sal’s friend and confidante. Later that year, Sal’s grandparents arrive to take her by car from Euclid to Lewiston, Idaho, where her mother is “resting peacefully.” As they begin the trip, Gram Hiddle asks Sal to entertain them with a story, so Sal spins the “extensively strange story” of Phoebe Winterbottom.

Phoebe’s very ordered life with her highly respectable family begins to change the day that a strange young man appears on their doorstep. He asks to see her mother, who has gone shopping. Phoebe, who has been warned about strangers, is convinced that he is a lunatic, and, when her mother disappears sometime later, Phoebe decides that she has been kidnapped by him. Phoebe’s father points out that her mother has left notes for each family member and that the freezer is filled with neatly labeled meals, but Phoebe persists in her belief. Meanwhile, Sal finds herself attracted to Ben, the cousin of another friend, Mary Lou Finney. Ben is staying with Mary Lou’s family, and his mother, too, is missing. Sal and Phoebe trace the “lunatic” to a nearby university, where they see Phoebe’s mother kiss him gently on the cheek. Sal flees and tracks down Ben, who has traveled on the same bus to the university town, at a hospital. Here, she meets his mother, a psychiatric patient. When Phoebe arrives home, she discovers that her mother is returning the next day and is bringing someone with her. That someone turns out to be the “lunatic,” her illegitimate son.

Sal’s story about Phoebe progresses slowly as she and her grandparents drive across the country. Sal is anxious to arrive in Lewiston by her mother’s birthday, but, a hundred miles east, Gram Hiddle has a stroke and is hospitalized. Gramps gives Sal money and the car keys, and Sal drives carefully, as Gramps had taught her, to Lewiston Hill. It is there that her mother’s bus left the road, killing her. A kind sheriff helps Sal find her mother’s grave, and finally Sal can accept that her mother is dead.

Critical Context

Walk Two Moons won the 1995 Newbery Medal, presented annually by the American Library Association to the author of the most distinguished contribution to literature for children published in the United States during the preceding year. Until its publication, Sharon Creech, who lives most of the year in England and whose three preceding novels were published there, was unknown as a writer of American juvenile novels. Walk Two Moons, although not originally intended as a book for young readers, will appeal to children between the ages of ten and thirteen because of its realistic portrayal of the young protagonists, its touches of humor, and its warm descriptions of the places and events experienced by an unforgettable thirteen-year-old heroine, Salamanca Tree Hiddle.

Accepting death, coming-of-age, and relationships such as those between parents and adolescents, between grandparents and adolescents, and among adolescent peers are important themes in juvenile and young adult literature, particularly in award-winning novels. These themes are all present in Walk Two Moons. This novel provides an interesting contrast to the 1993 Newbery Medal-winning Missing May (1992), by Cynthia Rylant. Both deal with a similar theme: accepting the death of a loved one. While each novel depicts colorful characters and uses poetic and picturesque language, Creech has successfully woven a far more complex tale from the same basic story. With Walk Two Moons, Creech assumes an important role in the field of juvenile literature.