Most of all this is a story about hope and how some people, some incredible wonderful people, will see you as the special person you are and they won't be confused by or suckered into kowtowing to someone else's prejudice, weakness and downright meanness. This is a story about loss and adults who aren't strong enough or smart enough to do the right thing. This is a story about weakness and fear in adults and how it gets passed down to children. This is a story about figuring out where you belong. The two girls, Finch and Sherri, stand beside each other in some of life's most painful moments. Sherri's mother plays 'dial a boyfriend' and has Sherri and her older sister moving from state to state in search of the right man. She really tells it like it is and doesn't put up with the nonsense. Lucky for Finch, Sherri, the girl with the blue hair, comes to town and couldn't give a fig for what the class bully, Amanda, thinks about anything. Maddy knows how to gain the trust of wounded creatures and she has a very special place for Finch in her very special heart. Lucky for Finch, she has a neighbor named Maddy, an older woman who rescues wildlife. So she sets out to find her real father and she fights to express herself as a girl instead of as a boy against adult prejudices and peer bullying and humiliations. But just as powerful, she knows she's a girl but was born with boy parts. She doesn't have her real parents for one. There's a lot that doesn't feel right to Finch. This is the story of Finch's journey after her mother passes on. She knows she has a real father out there somewhere and she's waiting for him to come and find her and take her home wherever that home might be. But to Finch these two adults don't feel like family. Finch's mother was smart though and she married a guy named Stan before she died so Finch has a home and a stepfather and a stepmother. Her father left when her mother's cancer came back. How can you convince the world you are a girl when you were born a boy? How can you be accepted in a small town when you are different?įinch has run out of parents.

Freeing Finch by Ginny Rorby