When Calder Bailey's parents divorce and her mother needs some time to put her house in order, Calder is dismayed to learn that she's expected to leave her California neighborhood to stay with her grandmother in Weldon, a village in Vermont. When Calder discovers a mysterious rock, an enormous green and strangely shaped serpentine boulder in the deep woods above town, she is drawn into friendships with Walt, a boy whose family owns the rock and the property it sits on, and with Mr. Cooley, an elderly traveler and retired professor of geology staying at the local inn. These friendships are tested, as is Calder's delicate sense of belonging, when it becomes apparent that Walt's ailing father, Calder's grandmother, a rich out-of-towner, and the Weldon Development Society all have plans for the boulder.

A sensitive story about the small and large accommodations of getting along in life, growing up, and finding a place to call one's own, A Piece of the World possesses the quiet intensity and lasting charm of Mildred Walker's best work.

From the 2001 reprint