Seventh grader Stevie can’t wait to attend her New Jersey community’s “Kickoff to Summer” festival. Shortly after she and her parents arrive, someone with a gun opens fire, injuring Stevie’s mom and many others. In the hours and days that follow, friends and family, including her grandparents, her good friend Avi, and neighbor Evelyn tend to Stevie’s fragile state while her mom is in a medically induced coma at a hospital in New York City. Stevie (white) is guilt-ridden, believing that if she’d said yes when her mom asked Stevie to join her throwing coins in the fountain, her mom might not have been hurt. As part of this grief and guilt, Stevie, staying in her mom’s childhood bedroom, leans in to understanding her mom more and begins re-reading poems that her mother wrote when her own dad was dying of AIDS (a story told previously in World Made of Glass). Exploring NYC by foot with Avi and emotional support dog Raisin helps Stevie deal with the physical and emotional PTSD symptoms she is experiencing while retracing meaningful places in her mom’s childhood. Phone calls with Evelyn, a Holocaust survivor, also help Stevie see that it’s possible to find a way forward. Stevie’s emotional response to the shooting is harrowing and genuine in this story that sees her surrounded by the love and support she needs to begin to heal.

In this life-affirming novel of trauma and recovery, a girl searches for a path forward after being forced to confront the reality of gun violence, for fans of Dusti Bowling and Jasmine Warga.



Stevie Jane Cohen-Kaplan's sheltered suburban life is shattered by a mass shooting at a festival in her town. In the aftermath, her brain feels broken. She can't bear to visit her mom, recovering in the hospital under Stevie's dad's watchful eye, or to be pent up in her grandparents' nearby Manhattan apartment.



To escape the apartment and her own thoughts, Stevie starts adventuring around New York City with her best friend, Avi, and a new therapy dog (in training). The trio starts chasing stories--about a neighbor's life after the Holocaust, Stevie's grandfathers who died of AIDS long before she was born, and even about her own mom's activist upbringing. These stories may not bring Stevie all the way back to "normal," but can they help her find a new version of herself?



Written with compassion and care, Every Story Ever Told places readers at the center of their own story and within a larger human tapestry, as one girl tries to make sense of the unthinkable.