On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

The teenagers hitchhiked with a postman: the novel hints that this postman was a serial killer. On the way, she met Jonah, who had just accidentally killed his abusive father. When she was fourteen, she escaped from the boarding school and went in search of her mother. The leader of the Cadets is Jonah Griggs, with whom Taylor has a history. She comes to believe that Hannah’s disappearance has something to do with her. The school principal tells her that Hannah has gone to Sydney to care for a friend, and Taylor suspects that there is more to this story than the principal is revealing. When Hannah leaves town without telling Taylor where she is going, Taylor investigates. The only adult in Taylor’s life is Hannah, and even she is distant and evasive. This territorial war has been going on for as long as anyone can remember, and Taylor’s leadership role is a grave responsibility, made more difficult by the fact that not everyone in the school supports her. Unofficially, she is the school’s leader in the war that breaks out annually between the boarders, the “Townies”-kids who live in the area-and the military Cadets who visit the area every year to conduct a training exercise. Officially, she is a house leader, with responsibility for the other children in her boarding residency. As one of the school’s oldest residents, Taylor is an important figure amongst the boarders, although not a universally popular one. Now seventeen, Taylor is plagued by the mystery of her origins. Taylor has memories of happiness-lying in bed with her mother standing on her father’s shoulders-but she doesn’t know who her parents are, and she can find no documentation of her official existence. Minutes later, Taylor was picked up by Hannah, a local woman, and driven to a nearby boarding school, where she has lived ever since. When Taylor was eleven years old, her mother left her at a gas station on Jellicoe Road, deep in rural New South Wales, Australia. She has been chosen to lead the school’s residents in a territorial war with other local kids, but she is distracted from this task when she comes across new information about her own personal history. It follows seventeen-year-old Taylor Lily Markham, who was abandoned as a child and grew up in a boarding school.

Jellicoe Road is a 2006 young adult novel by Australian writer Melina Marchetta, first published in Australia under the title On the Jellicoe Road.

On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta