Presley Jackson is a collector of words and homes. As snow begins to fall in Brooklyn, all Presley wants for the holidays is to make the city her family’s forever home—a dream that seems doomed from the start.

Then winter break homework brings Presley to Gilda Six, a peculiar woman who is on a remarkable quest to find her grandson. Just who is this mysterious Gilda, where did she come from, and how far is she willing to take her zany schemes? As snow and secrets pile up, Presley will need all her wits to answer these questions and more.

One thing’s for sure: Gilda needs Presley’s help. And maybe Presley and her family need Gilda’s help, too.

In award-winning author Pat Cumming’s magical companion to her debut novel Trace, there are no coincidences—and home can always be found where your heart is.

Coretta Scott King Award winner Pat Cummings’s debut TRACE, about a boy who stumbles into a ghost story born in the turmoil of New York City’s 1863 Draft Riots.

Weighed down by guilt for an accident that took his parents’ lives, 13 year-old Trace suddenly finds himself submerged in his quirky aunt’s Brooklyn lifestyle. As carefully as he dodges taunts from his classmates and harassment from authorities, there is someone he can’t shake: a ghostly child that awaits him in the shadowy stacks of the New York Public Library. Trace may not believe in ghosts, but how can he shake a ghost that believes in him?