Orbiting Jupiter
Orbiting Jupiter is a 2015 young adult fiction novel written by Gary D. Schmidt, the author of Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy and Okay for Now. The novel focuses on a Maine family as they begin fostering a teenage father. Synopsis Jackson (Jack) Hurd is a twelve-year-old boy living with his parents on an organic farm when his family begins fostering fourteen-year-old Joseph Brook. Joseph's caseworker, Mrs. Stroud, informs the family that he recently spent a month incarcerated at a place called Stone Mountain for trying to kill his teacher while high on pills and also that he has a three-month-old daughter who he has never met. Two days later, Joseph arrives at the farm and closes himself off to theschool bus driver hassles Joseph for having a child so young and he refuses to get on, so he and Jack instead walk to school in the cold, which becomes a daily ritual despite the frigid winter. At school, Joseph overall receives little sympathy but is liked by a few of his teachers. One day, his biological father shows up at the farm without warning while he is in counseling and demands to see him, but Mr. Hurd sends