Leaving Woodstock
A Novel · Kensington Publishing · May 2027
Available in Trade Paperback and eBook
This evocative Southern coming-of-age debut novel introduces the vulnerable, stubborn, wholly loveable Emma Joy Ryder, who leaves Georgia on a journey toward a soon-to-be legendary music festival—and adulthood—in the summer of 1969.
August 1969: The Woodstock festival in Bethel, New York, is about as far from Woodstock, Georgia, as a place can get, but sixteen-year-old Emma Joy Ryder is certain she’ll find her father at its namesake festival. Ten years ago, her tomcatting daddy took his guitar and $100 from the cash jar and walked out, leaving his wife and daughter behind. Now, after her mother’s sudden death, Emma Joy is determined to find him and bring him home if she’s to have any hope of a family.
Emma Joy has five days to get there and little to her name aside from a duffel bag and a goldfish in Tupperware. But she has grit and her late mama’s ghost, who appears when she’s needed most. Along the way, she finds unexpected allies, faces mounting obstacles, and is tailed by her mother’s sometime boyfriend, Sheriff Mosby. Emma Joy is swept through a country grappling with change and revolution, towards the epicenter of peace and music.
At Woodstock, amid the chaos and the iconic performances that will become legend, she finds love, heartbreak, and a glimpse of what the future holds. And through muddy moments of grace and loss, she’ll face the truth about herself, her father, and the thin line between falling apart and growing up.
PRAISE
“After losing her mother, a grieving Emma Joy Ryder, sixteen, longs to find her musician father, who disappeared from her life ten years ago. She steals a car and escapes her small town of Woodstock, Georgia, pursued by the hard-boiled sheriff who has been her longtime surrogate father. In a road trip for the ages, Emma Joy alternately walks and hitches rides as she travels with new acquaintances to rural New York, hoping to find her father at the forthcoming Woodstock music festival. What she discovers at the historic 1969 event will gladden your heart and break it at the same time. An immersive story with unforgettable characters.”
“A half-orphan, a sheriff, and a ghost set out on a journey to the Woodstock Music Festival in search of an illusion, only to discover the transformative power of reality. Part coming-of-age story and part magical mystery tour, it will resonate in the reader’s memory for a long time.”
“Sensitive, downright funny, and highly entertaining.A superbly rendered story filled with wit and wisdom by a new and welcome voice in southern fiction.”
“Emma Joy Ryder is a heroine, a wayward girl, a woman like us — brave, bruised, and breathtakingly real.”