(excerpt from first chapter)
Moxie means gumption, she said, which is clearly a good thing. Just taste that word. It has heft and strength and presence. It means resilience, which is long and flows like the river. It means ingenuity. That’s the quality of being clever, original, and inventive.
Moxie is all those things. I don’t know if it’s because Grans just got it right or if Moxie rose to the occasion of her name. People tend to do that, you know. Maybe even you. All I know is that if Moxie wasn’t here, Slow Duck Crossing would be gone. And it’s the kind of place you’d miss.
I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let’s go back to March 4th. March forth. I read-between-the-lines in the local newspaper named The Hooch Happenings about what happened on March 4th at City Hall. That means I pieced it all together beyond what was in the story because I know that girl.
A tiny-for-her-age ten-year-old girl with a long wavy ponytail marched forth up the center aisle with her jaw stuck out.
She took the microphone off the stand because it was up too high and if something isn’t right she makes it right.
And she spoke.
That’s because she has gumption, resilience, and ingenuity.
She said, loud and clear, “Hi, my name is Moxie and I live in Slow Duck Crossing and if you pave my road, cars will speed through and kill the baby ducks that will be trying to get across the road to the river soon, and I think that is wrong and I’m here to change that plan.”
The important people up in the important chairs apparently did something so insulting, so mean, and so unforgivable that everything that happened next is a result of their action.
That day — when the nests were already feathered, the eggs were soon to be laid and made warm with incubation and the hopes of mothers-soon-to-be, and the earth was pulsating with anticipation for its newest arrivals — they laughed at her.
They laughed at her.
And if there is one thing you don’t do when someone hands his or her, or their, heart to you, when someone comes to you with a burning desire to make things right, it’s laugh at them, no matter how small or insignificant they seem. Especially then. Because you will have made a mistake.
You will have underestimated them.
Who doesn’t love ducks? You’ll find out as diverse Girl Power takes on City Hall to right wrongs in the raging river of change.
Because of Winn Dixie meets Fly Away Home when a unique mailbox bears witness to a race against time, slightly post-pandemic, in a historically-complicated place known as Slow Duck Crossing. People strive to be heard while learning indelible lessons about both personal and collective power.
Ten-year-old Moxie, who was born as her mother died, wants — needs — to save ducklings that are sure to be killed if construction of a new development starts too soon. She hatches a plan that may save everything — the ducks, her patched-together family, and the future of Slow Duck Crossing itself. Moxie braves coyotes, a city councilor driven to destroy all memories of the past, and the raging river of change. Can this small girl with gumption, resilience and ingenuity convince a city there’s a new way forward? Can historical wounds — to a land, to a family — ever be healed?
In the meantime, Moxie’s bike-fixing sixteen-year-old sibling, her on-the-brink-of-a-new-beginning grandmother, and their beloved mail carrier each face their own moments of truth, and tragedy. Finally, a surprise visitor from their past challenges this family to learn what forgiveness really means, which frees them to pave a new way forward.
Slow Duck Crossing* invites you into a surprisingly fast-paced story with as many twists and turns as the river where it’s set. Come spend some time in a place you’ll quickly grow to love, with people, guinea hens, coyotes, ducks (of course)— and a mailbox poet — that you’ll never forget.
*inspired by a real location in the number-one place in the world for movie-making
Slow Duck Crossing 