Up a Road Slowly

Up a Road Slowly is a coming-of-age novel by Irene Hunt that won the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature in 1967. The story takes place in the United States during the mid 20th century.

Plot summary

When seven-year-old Julie's mother dies, she is sent to live with her Aunt Cordelia. Cordelia is an unmarried schoolteacher, and lives in a large home several miles outside town. Her brother, Haskell lives in a converted carriage house behind the main house. Haskell is an alcoholic, with, like his niece, aspirations to be a writer, although he never manages to produce a manuscript.

At first, Aunt Cordelia appears stern and strict to the grief-stricken Julie, but as she grows to young adulthood, Julie comes to love her, and to see her aunt's house as home. She becomes so attached to Aunt Cordelia that even when she has the chance to move back with her father, she declines.

The story follows Julie from the age of seven to seventeen, from elementary school through her high school graduation, and documents the ordinary events in the life of a child: first love, the cruelty of children, jealousy, and struggles with schoolwork. At the same, as Julie develops. She also encounters problems in the lives of the adults around her, including mental illness and alcoholism.