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Coal
Paperback
AnimalsGeneral Juvenile Fiction
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jun 6 2026
Pages: 176
Weight: 0.42
Height: 0.44 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
Eleven-year-old Laura Dela Cruz has counted two hundred and three evenings since her family left the Philippines for South Dakota, where her father has taken a teaching job on a Native American reservation. She counts them the way she counts everything that matters: carefully, privately, holding on.
Back home, her dog Coal is waiting. A stubborn, black and white Jack Russell terrier who has been her responsibility since she was nine - her morning routine, her afternoon walks, her constant. She couldn't bring him. The distance was too far, the logistics too hard, the promise she made him at the gate the morning they left already impossible before she finished saying it.
Then one Sunday evening, seven thousand miles away, her phone lights up with her auntie's name. And Laura has to say goodbye to the most important thing in her world through a screen she cannot reach through.
Coal is a story about grief that doesn't resolve neatly, love that survives distance, and a girl learning - slowly, imperfectly, one walk at a time - what it means to come home when home isn't where you left it.
Inspired by a true story. Written by a father for his daughter, after their family dog passed away while they were living abroad.
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