Even though she and her mother are poor and live in a trailer, Sarabeth Silver is one happy camper. She has a great network of caring best friends, and her young mom (who had Sarabeth as a teenager) is like a sister, best friend and guardian angel all rolled into one. Then it all falls apart (like you knew it would–why else would it be on the tearjerker list??) Sarabeth’s mom, only 30 years old, dies suddenly from a freak heart attack, and just like that, all the light leaves Sarabeth’s life. Now she’s forced to stay with her mother’s best friend in a one-room apartment, where there’s no room for her between the woman’s hostile husband and their new baby. Confused and angry, Sarabeth feels completely trapped–until she remembers what her mother tried to forget–the family that disowned them both when they found out her mom was pregnant with Sara. Sarabeth has relatives that she’s never met, and perhaps a hopeful future, if she’s brave enough to go looking for it. (If you want to get to know Sarabeth from the beginning, read the prequel to Girlhearts, called Silver by Norma Fox Mazer, another of my favorite books. But you don’t have to read Silver first to love and cry over Sarabeth and her loss) (2 weepies)