Kat's Surrender

the long version

After losing her mother to cancer, thirteen-year-old Kat O'Connor has withdrawn from the world. As she tries to ignore her old friends, she makes a new one in the General, an elderly man who feeds pigeons and lives in a fantasy. Kat finds she can’t avoid her old friends entirely; she still sees her best friend, Maggie, who believes that a next-door neighbor, Mrs. Twitchell, is a malevolent witch, a notion Kat accepts. Calamity strikes again when Maggie is injured in a hit-and-run accident; the General is the guilty driver. Kat loses her only remaining friend, Paul, when she tries to defend the General. Only a strict teacher, Sister Mildred, offers any sympathy, but it’s not until Kat falls off a ledge and into Mrs. Twitchell’s apartment does she learn that everyone has some tragedy, and that life can be good when it is faced with courage.