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“Ruby, who is Filipino American, recently graduated high school and now spends her time painting. Not the paintings she’d love to create, but instead painting walls and ceilings with hundreds of strokes of eggshell white. All her friends have moved on with their lives, but she is stuck under a pile of bills from the cancer that killed her mother and a father who is drinking more and more. …The plot is captivating and new: Ruby is searching for a path that will help her learn her art, while others in the city are searching for a way to tangle her in their web of lies and deception. Ruby has a clear sense of right and wrong and is not shy about sharing that with anyone, including some of the wealthiest people in San Francisco.”

– School Library Journal

The Vanishing Station

Written by Ana Ellickson
Published by Amulet Books

Eighteen-year-old Filipino American Ruby Santos has been unmoored since her mother’s death. She can’t apply to art school like she’s always dreamed, and she and her father have had to move into the basement of their home and rent out the top floor while they work to pay back her mother’s hospital bills.

Then Ruby finds out her father has been living a secret life as a delivery person for a magical underworld—he “jumps” train lines to help deliver packages for a powerful family. Recently, he’s fallen behind on deliveries (and deeper into alcoholism), and if his debts aren’t satisfied, they’re going to take her mother’s house. In an effort to protect her father and save all that remains of her mother, Ruby volunteers to take over her dad’s station and start jumping train lines.

But this is no ordinary job. Ruby soon realizes that the trains are much more than doors to romance and adventure: they’re also doors to trafficking illicit goods and fierce rivalries. As she becomes more entangled with the magical underworld and the mysterious boy who’s helped her to learn magic, she realizes too late that she may be in over her head. Can she free her father and save her mother’s house? Or has she only managed to get herself pulled into the dangerous web her father was trapped in?

Primary ISBN: 9781419764226
Publication Date: April 2024
Available As: Hardcover, Audiobook, eBook
Young Adult, Age 12 or older

Community Represented:

Themes: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Setting: United States (San Francisco CA)

Character's Place in the Immigration Journey: Unknown Arrival

Book Creator(s) Connection to the Community Represented: Own Voices/Lived Experience

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