Everything Below The Sky

**Everything Below the Sky**

*"How do you like to go up in a swing, up in the air so blue?"*

When Madeleine Mae Monroe was seven years old, she believed that if she swung high enough, the wind might carry her beyond the iron gates of her family's home. Above her was an endless blue sky. Below her was a world she was still learning how to survive.

Growing up in a small Georgia mining town, Maddie learns that girls are expected to grow up before they are ready. They are taught to be patient, responsible, and understanding long before anyone asks what they need. They are told that maturity comes naturally, when really it is something the world demands from them.

In the Monroe household, Maddie becomes the girl who notices everything and is noticed by almost no one. Her father works beneath the earth in the coal mines, her mother quietly carries the weight of the family, and her brilliant older brother, Caspian, becomes the hope everyone places their future on.

But as Maddie gets older, the silence she once accepted becomes harder to live with.

Beyond the gates of her home, she finds people who see her differently. A group of friends who remind her how to laugh. A best friend who listens to the words she struggles to say. A boy who teaches her that love can be gentle instead of something she has to earn.

But healing is not simple, and growing up does not mean carrying everything alone.

**Everything Below the Sky** is a coming-of-age story about family, friendship, first love, sexism, mental health, and a girl learning that she is more than the roles the world has chosen for her.

(English is not my first language, please bear with me!)