Cot Nineteen

About this book

Twelve-year-old Dot Ferreira has lived in three foster homes in fourteen months, and she has a rule: never unpack. Her new placement is Carrick Falls, Ontario, a river town south of Ottawa, with Teddy Sauvé, a gentle Hydro One lineman who cooks too much soup, keeps a carbon monoxide detector in every room, and insists that doors stay open. Dot plans to be gone by spring, when her mother has promised to be well. But every Saturday she must carry Teddy's soup to Mina Brouwer, an eighty-eight-year-old Dutch farmer at the Riverside care home who calls her "Teddy" and asks strange questions about a door. In January 1998, during the great ice storm, eleven-year-old Teddy slept on Cot Nineteen in the town arena, where strangers became a family. Something happened in a freezing barn that winter that no one in Carrick Falls will talk about. And Dot is very good at noticing what people don't say.