The Key to the Golden Firebird [Hardcover]

Maureen Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 25, 2004

The funny thing about stop signs is that they're also start signs.

Mayzie is the middle sister, sent to private school because of her brains. Brooks, the oldest, is a beautiful athlete who's conflicted about her two loves: softball and Dave. Palmer is the youngest, tentative in all but her blistering pitches as the only freshman on varsity softball. Though very different, the Golds are sisters through and through.

When the unthinkable happens -- the death of their father -- a year passes in shattered silence. Brooks begins drinking, Palm withdraws, and May is left to fend for herself. She gets a job at a coffee spot, and hits the books. But the one thing she can't do alone is learn to drive. That's when Peter, her lifelong nemesis and all around thorn-in-side, assumes a surprising new role in May's life: he teaches her to drive, and the connection between them changes from childhood animosity to one that May can't understand, or doesn't yet want to.

As May slowly starts to pick up the pieces of her life, her sisters struggle with their own demons. The Gold sisters have been changed irrevocably, and they are all but lost to one another, until the key is found. The key to their father's Pontiac Firebird.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When Mike Gold has a heart attack and dies in his 1967 Firebird, the car sits in the family garage untouched for a year. May, Brooks, and Palmer Gold--all teenage girls in what May calls the "Tall, Blond, and Wonderful Family"--suffer from neglect as well when their mother goes to work overtime at the hospital to pay the bills. The three girls deal with their father's death in different ways: Brooks quits softball and starts drinking, Palmer ferociously focuses on pitching and TV, hiding her panic attacks from everyone, and May tries to keep the family together. As the family unravels, the Firebird endures. Palmer uses the back seat as a place to escape, Brooks takes it out for a spin when she's drunk (and gets arrested), and for the grand finale, the three girls take the battleship-sized car to Camden Yards to throw their father's ashes on the pitcher's mound. Fortunately, this is the act that allows the girls to start anew, like the phoenix rising.

Readers will appreciate the character of the only really steady force in this novel--the frizzy-haired, wonderfully goofy Pete Camp, May's one-time nemesis who ends up helping out the family and ultimately winning her heart. As engaging, wryly funny, and issue-rich as Ann Brashares's The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Maureen Johnson's The Key to the Golden Firebird will no doubt appeal to a similar audience of teens dealing with their budding sexuality, peer pressure, and much, much more. (Ages 12 and older) --Karin Snelson

From School Library Journal

Grade 7 Up–Poignant and laced with wry humor, this novel follows the Gold sisters as they cope with their father's sudden death from a heart attack. While their mother works overtime to keep them afloat financially, the three teens cope in their own way–often with disastrous results. The focus is on May, the studious, steady middle sister, who tries to hold the family together even as she is going to pieces on the inside. She is falling for Pete, a neighbor she has grown up with, but is afraid to admit it even to herself, so she watches in agony as he dates her coworker at a coffee shop. Palmer, the youngest, begins to have panic attacks. Brooks, the oldest, quits the softball team, gets drunk on a regular basis, and makes plans to have sex with her not-quite-boyfriend. Set in a suburb of Philadelphia, the novel revolves around baseball and the father's Pontiac Firebird, which serves as a haven for one of the girls, a means to rebel for another, and an important part of the healing process for all three. This is a wonderfully moving and entertaining novel full of authentic characters and emotions.–Miranda Doyle, San Francisco Public Library
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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins (May 25, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060541385
• ISBN-13: 978-0060541385
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,343,043 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Maureen Johnson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Like a lot of people who end up writing books, she was always reading. This paid off in the end, but also resulted in her not playing any sports, so she is spectacularly uncoordinated, and is easily injured by harmless household objects, like endtables.

She studied writing and theatrical dramaturgy at Columbia University. Before she could spend all her days writing, Maureen served up hamburgers in the company of mad scientists and talking skeletons in New York, tended bar in Piccadilly Circus, nervously worked alongside live tigers in Las Vegas, and once got mixed up with the entire cast of a major West End musical.

Maureen lives in New York City, and when she is not writing, spends her time in a relentless pursuit of the perfect cup of coffee. If you know where it is, get in touch with her at once.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Key to the golden Firebird, November 6, 2005

A Kid's Review

This review is from: The Key to the Golden Firebird (Hardcover)

The Key to the Golden Firebird
Maureen Johnson

This is the story of three teenage sisters that have to work together to over come a tragedy in their life. A year ago the three sisters Brooks, May, and Palmer found out about their dads death. He died from a heart attack in his beloved 1967 Firebird. Their family is falling apart now that their dad is gone. Their mom is not home much because of her work. She has a night time job as a nurse.
All three of the sisters have a different way of coping with this tragedy. Brooks is the oldest of the three girls. She found a boyfriend, Dave, that she is spending every minute of her free time with. He is being a bad influence on her life. Dave talked her into quitting her high school softball teem, and now she is into a life of drinking, staying out late, and getting into trouble. This life leads her to getting arrested for drunk driving!
May is the middle sister. She is known as the responsible one. She is doing well in school, and has an after school job to raise money for collage. May does something that no one would expect from a responsible child. She fails her driving test. When her neighbor, Pete, agrees to give her lessons, May discovers new feelings for Pete. She is falling for the once mean neighbor that would play tricks on her every change he got.
Finally there's Palmer. She is the youngest sister. She likes to keep to herself, and never tell anyone anything about her life. She is an amazing softball player. She is the pitcher on her high school team. She watches tv a lot and likes to go through her moms closet. One day while she is looking through old things in her mothers closet she discovers something that will change all of them forever. It is the key to their dads old Firebird.
I really enjoyed reading this book. I really like the authors style of writing. I like the action of the book, and how it really makes you feel like a part of the story. I also liked how in the beginning they are all separate and secluded, but by the end they discover that it is really important to stick together and to trust each other.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Emotional and touching story of 3 sisters coping with death, September 10, 2004

By 

Teenreads.com (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Key to the Golden Firebird (Hardcover)

It's been a year since the unthinkable happened. On that fateful day, Mike Gold had a fatal heart attack in his beloved 1967 golden Firebird Pontiac. Since they lost their father, the Gold sisters --- May, Brooks and Palmer --- have not been the same. Before, they were typical teenagers who enjoyed carefree summer pranks. Now, their mother is not around as much; she has to work the night shift as a nurse to support the family, and the three sisters are left to fend for themselves.

THE KEY TO THE GOLDEN FIREBIRD tells the stories of three teenage sisters who are all very different, yet they're struggling with the same problem. May Gold, short for Mayzie, is the reliable sister --- she's smart, does well in school, works a part-time job to save money for college, and is expected to keep a watchful eye on her younger sister, Palmer. In a very un-Maylike turn of events, May fails her driver's exam. Pete Camp, the adorable dorky neighbor, volunteers to teach May to drive. During May's summer of driving lessons, she also encounters a bumpy ride of falling in love with someone she knew her whole life.

Brooks Gold is the oldest. As a testament to their father's addiction to baseball, Brooks is named after the famous baseball player Brooks Robinson. Brooks herself is a star softball player, but in the summer after her father's death, she finds herself hanging out with a new wild boyfriend, Dave, and his inner-circle of misfits. When Dave suggests that she quit the team, she comes to a realization.

Brooks thinks, "Her father had put a bat in her hand the minute she was strong enough to hold it up, and that was that. Afternoons and weekends were for playing. She didn't even know what people who didn't play sports did with their time. But she had to admit, she'd seen less and less of a point in playing in the last year." Once off the team, Brooks has more time to drink excessively, come home way too late, and get into trouble.

Palmer Gold, the youngest, is also an amazing softball player. Even though she's only a freshman, she's a pitcher on the varsity softball team. Palmer lives in a world of her own, keeping her problems to herself. She doesn't tell anyone about the panic attacks that keep waking her up in the middle of the night. She also snoops around watching her sisters and rummaging through her mother's closet. During one of her investigations, she finds something she wasn't expecting that will be the key to helping her and her sisters feel better.

Maureen Johnson's first novel tells the touching tale of three sisters' journey as they find a way to make peace with their father's death. The Gold family deals with their grief the same way they treat their problems --- silently. As a result, each sister has an emotional explosion at the end of the book. While dealing with their emotions, they are also forced to realize the importance of each other as family. At times sad and at times humorous, THE KEY TO THE GOLDEN FIREBIRD is an engaging read that you will enjoy.

--- Reviewed by Kristi Olson ([e-mail])

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fire up that engine, June 1, 2004

By 

Alexandra Norman, an avid reader (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Key to the Golden Firebird (Hardcover)

I loved this story. It was funny, engaging, moving, and ultimately totally gripping. I read a lot, and in many genres (from SciFi to sufi mysticism - no kidding), and I quite literally could not put the Key to the Golden Firebird down. The characters were very real to me, and their situations sympathetic and interesting. The way people acted seemed very natural - just as confusing as people are all the time. I was desperate to find out if May could pull something good out of her awkwardness with Pete, and the spiralling troubles of her family, and ... well, I won't spoil the suspense for you. Read it, and love it yourself!!