How It All Goes Down
Taylor Markham's had a hard knock life. When she was eleven years old, her mother abandoned her at a gas station on the Jellicoe Road. A few minutes later, Hannah, a housemother at the Jellicoe School, drove up and took Taylor back to the school with her, which would be her home for the next six years. Since then, Taylor's been haunted by memories of her mother, the mystery of who her father was, and questions of her own identity.
As if that's not enough, Taylor has some major responsibilities on her hands. She's the leader of one of the Houses on the school's campus and has also been chosen to lead the school in their annual territory war with Jellicoe's Townies and the military school Cadets who come to town once a year for training in the wilderness.
The war has been going on as long as any of them can remember and has caused serious hostilities between the three factions. What makes things even more complicated, though, is that not everyone is on board with Taylor being the leader, and she faces serious opposition in the task ahead. Wee.
Looking after fifty-some seventh grade girls and being leader of the territory wars might seem like more than enough to deal with, but things really get out of control when Hannah disappears.
When the school principal tells Taylor that Hannah had to go to Sydney to care for a friend, Taylor instinctively knows there's a lot more to it than that and that Hannah's absence has something to do with her. Then Chaz Santangelo, leader of the Townies and son of a local police officer, tells her he can help her get answers about her past and her parents. The war takes a sharp left turn, becoming a vehicle for Taylor to learn the truth about who she is.
There's also another source of drama in this girl's life—her complicated relationship with the leader of the Cadets, Jonah Griggs. There are miles of tension between these two because they are rivals in the territory wars, and yet they also kind of like each other.
Another piece of the puzzle is a book Hannah's been writing for years about five children, three of whom survive a terrible car accident on the Jellicoe Road. The more Taylor reads the book, the more convinced she is that it isn't just fiction.
When Chaz shows her a picture of a boy their age who disappeared years before, Taylor realizes two things: The boy is not only one of the kids in Hannah's book, but is actually her father. By the time she sees a photo of the five kids themselves—including her mother, who was also one of them—Taylor is past the point of taking no for an answer when she asks about her past, and decides it's time to take drastic action.
Along with Jonah, who's pretty much her boyfriend by this point, Taylor travels to Sydney in search of her mother, only to discover that her mom is dying as a result of complications of drug addiction. Their journey also connects them with Jonah's military commander, Jude Scanlon, who was part of the alliance formed after the car accident. Putting the pieces together, Taylor comes to realize that the five kids of the past created the territory wars not as a tool for division, but as a game for the friends to play to make life more interesting.
In the end, Taylor's mother returns to Jellicoe to live out her last days with Taylor and Hannah. While she ultimately loses the mother she's spent years wondering about, Taylor finds family she never had in Hannah, Jude, and Jonah, and is able to begin moving forward with new knowledge of her past.