Freaky Fast Frankie Joe by Lutricia Clifton

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  • Annotation:
When twelve-year-old Frankie Joe's mother is sent to jail, he is uprooted from his home in Texas to live with the father he has never met, his father's wife, and his father's four "legitimate" sons in Illinois. Frankie Joe is miserable. Trying to adjust to his blended family proves too much to bear, so Frankie Joe hatches a plot to escape on his bike back home to Texas. For that he needs money, and so Frankie Joe's Freaky Fast Delivery Service is born. 
  • Book Talk:
From Publisher:  Twelve-year-old Frankie Joe Huckaby can’t find anything good to say about Plainview, Illinois, where he must spend the next ten months living with a father he knows only through birthday cards, a stepmother he didn’t know existed, and four half-brothers intent on making him the “freak” of the town.  His mother is in jail, so he has no choice…or does he?  When life in Plainview becomes unbearable, Frankie Joe hatches a plan to ride his old Rover Sport bicycle 1,400 miles through the middle of the Corn Belt back to the Lone Star Trailer Park in Laredo, Texas.  For that he needs money, and so he opens Frankie Joe’s Freaky Fast Delivery Service.  But Frankie Joe hasn’t counted on quirky clients, unpredictable winter weather, and his equally unpredictable new family.
His deliveries win new friends for Frankie Joe, a place in the rural Illinois community, and a sense of achievement. But his planned escape is destroyed by a heartbreaking betrayal, and Frankie Joe needs all his incredible resilience and the loving support of his new family to survive the devastating loss.