Sharon Creech is an acclaimed children's author who always seems to know how to express what is going on in the heart of a teenage girl. In The Wanderer, a Newberry Honor Book, she allows her thirteen year old protagonist, Sophie, to narrate. Sophie is an orphan. She is on the way to visit with her grandfather Bompie in England, alongside her three uncles and two cousins, Cody and Brian. Cody also narrates segments of the novel.
Sophie has never spent this much time with her relatives before, but is able to really discover them as people during the journey; in doing so, she also finds out a great deal about herself. Most importantly she learns how her parents died, and that it is perfectly fine for her to express her emotions about their deaths.
Creech published the novel in 2000, and it was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, an honor she had previously experienced; Creech is in fact the first American writer to win the Carnegie Medal for British Children's Books. In Sophie, Creech has created a protagonist with whom she shares many characteristics, including a close relationship with her cousins; Creech would visit with her cousins every year and their home in Quincy, Kentucky, is often featured in her books as the fictional town of Bybanks, Kentucky; there is an allusion to Bybanks in The Wanderer.
