“When the flying boat / returns to earth at last / I open my eyes / and gaze out the round window. / What is all the white? I whisper. / Where is all the world?” Kek is feeling the disconcerting displacement and overwhelming loss that comes with being a refugee. While he’s grateful to be with his aunt and cousin, who are already settled, although struggling, in America, he is also filled with guilt—his father and brother were killed, and his mother disappeared in their harrowing journey to a refugee camp to escape the fighting that tore their lives apart in Sudan. Arriving in Minneapolis in the midst of winter, there is nothing in the landscape to remind Kek of his homeland until he spots a cow on the drive from the airport into the city. Kek and his family were cattle herders. With the help of Hannah, a girl living in his aunt’s building, Kek takes a bus back to the farm and convinces Lou, the woman who is struggling to keep it going, to let him work for her. He doesn’t care about money—a good thing because she has little to spare—he just craves the companionship of the cow and the sense of calm that comes over him when he’s with her. But Kek finds that friendship, as well as a sense of purpose, also help lift the weight of his sorrow, and help him deal with the challenges of life in a new land. Katherine Applegate’s quiet, stirring novel in verse only once specifies Kek’s homeland. Her story is told in the restrained yet powerful voice of a boy for whom it is simply, profoundly, thought of as “home.” (Ages 10–14)

Kek comes from Africa.

In America, he sees the snow for the first time, and feels its sting. He's never walked on ice, and he falls. He wonders if the people in this new place will be like the winter—cold and unkind.

In Africa, Kek lived with his mother, father, and brother. But only he and his mother have survived, and now she's missing. Kek is on his own. Slowly, he makes friends: a girl who is in foster care, and old woman who owns a rundown farm, and a cow whose name means "family" in his native language. As Kek awaits word of his mother's fate, he weathers the tough Minnesota winter by finding warmth in his few friendships, strength in his memories, and belief in his new country.

Bestselling author Katherine Applegate presents a beautifully wrought novel about an immigrant's journey from hardship to hope.

Katherine Applegate is the author of several bestselling series, including Animorphs, as well as The Buffalo Storm, a picture book.

Home of the Brave is Katherine Applegate's first stand-alone novel. "In Kek's story, I hope readers will see the neighbor child with a strange accent, the new kid in class from some faraway land, the child in odd clothes who doesn't belong," she says. "I hope they see themselves."

Ms. Applegate lives with her family in North Carolina.