UPSIDE-DOWN GIRL

Forthcoming April 2027

Reeling from repeated miscarriages and a failed marriage, Holly Carlsson leaves Seattle to start fresh in New Zealand. In the beautiful seaside village of Kaikoura, she lucks into a job running a café, the first step in a long-held dream of opening her own bakery. Along the way she meets a Roma guitarist, whose whiskey-burned voice seems to speak directly to her battered heart.

But Holly soon learns that not everything is as idyllic as it seems in this so-called paradise. She comes home one day to find Tui, the young Maori girl from next door, sleeping in her garage, hungry and neglected. Holly grows attached to the little girl, despite warnings from the locals that she shouldn’t insert herself into a culture and way of life that she doesn’t understand.

When Tui disappears, Holly throws caution to the wind and sets off alone to find her, desperate not to lose another child from her life. Navigating a world, and emotions, upside down from all that she knows, Holly learns that there is more than one direction home.

PRAISE FOR UPSIDE-DOWN GIRL

Upside-Down Girl swept me away into a world of intrigue, compassion and resolve. Stunningly written, Johnson covers the journey of one woman’s discovery of who she is beyond loss and grief. The beauty of it all is that she doesn’t leave us there. She carries us from the USA to New Zealand to the destiny of one small child’s life. We care deeply about the people—real and raw—kind and rough. And we never stop caring . . . to the point of asking ourselves what would we have done? — Julie Maloney, Award-winning author of A Matter of Chance and director of Women Reading Aloud

Achingly tender and infused with deep feeling, Upside-Down Girl is, at its heart, about the different ways love arrives in our lives—the ways it moves through us, and the ways we move through it, fumbling towards grace. Julie Christine Johnson introduces us to some of the complexities of contemporary Aotearoa while spinning a tale of family and healing. This is an accomplished, evocative novel that will linger in my imagination for a long time to come. — Jenny Williams, author of House of Liars and The Atlas of Forgotten Places

Upside-Down Girl is a wonderfully hopeful novel about a woman who moves to a foreign country to reinvent herself. While forging deep bonds with her found family, Johnson’s character proves that no matter how many times a heart breaks, it can still love. This one will linger with me for a long time. — Kelli Estes, USA Today bestselling author of The Girl Who Wrote in Silk and Smoke on the Wind

“This hopeful novel is a balm for the modern soul. Through complex characters driven by desire, circumstance, and choice, Johnson once again punctuates her keen psychological insights with sentences so delicious they’ll leave you breathless. —Kathryn Craft, author of Crafting Story Movement: Techniques to Engage Readers and Drive Your Novel Forward and The Far End of Happy

Upside-Down Girl will soon be available for pre-order from your favorite book retailer, including your local, independent bookstore, Amazon.com, Bookshop.com, and through the publisher’s website Rootstockpublishing.com