When We Were Wildflowers

[2025 Amby Awards Favorite, 2025 Triple Moon Awards Teen Fiction Winner]

🌻🎸Inspired by the Dolly Parton song 'Wildflowers', best friends Violet and Poppy embrace their wild sides to navigate a tumultuous year in 8th grade.🎸🌻

When 13-year-old good girl Violet Wilson moves to a new housing development and bumps into wild child Poppy Cooper, there's a clash of worlds that transforms them both. Their friendship blossoms like an unruly wildflower seed, despite Violet's mother's attempts to squash it. Mrs. Wilson objects to Poppy's troubled, low-income family and her risky behavior.

After a string of misadventures lands the girls in big trouble, Violet's bond with her mother begins to unravel. Mrs. Wilson, who once tended to Violet's safe, predictable world, becomes the fence caging her in. Not only is Violet's rocky relationship with her mother sending quakes through her world, but her parents' marriage crumbles before her eyes, leaving an uncertain future for Violet and her older brother Teddy.

When Violet's mom plans to move back to her hometown, a thousand miles away, the wildflower girls enlist Teddy's help. They vow to complete an epic bucket list of teenage "firsts" before they must say goodbye. It's all fun and games until Violet learns that Poppy is keeping a devastating secret. The truth threatens to rip their friendship apart.

Can these wildflowers weather the storm? Or was Violet's mom right about Poppy all along?

RATED PG-13: some foul language, teenage subject matter, kissing, underage drinking at a party

TRIGGER WARNING: divorce, infidelity, incarcerated parent, alcohol dependence, car accident