Twelve-year-old Lonnie Collins Motion, who many people call Locomotion, is in the process of recovering from the events that took place in the previous novel, Locomotion. He is living in a foster home with Miss Edna and her younger son Rodney. Her older son Jenkins is serving in the war, which is never named, overseas.

Life hasn't been easy for Lonnie. His parents are both dead, and the lives of his sister Lili and him have been changed forever in the fire. Lili is also living with a foster family, but because of what happened during the fire, they cannot be together. It is the events of that fire and the loss of his parents that leaves him so troubled.

The novel is presented in the form of a series of letters written to Lili, allowing Locomotion to share the events of his life (and a few his poems ... the form that made up the earlier novel) with her. He is settling into a new school year, which is off to a rough start because his new teacher doesn't appreciate his skill in poetry and his troubling grades in most of his subjects.

His foster family is also confronted with a big challenge when Jenkins goes missing on the battlefield. He is found a short while later, but with major injuries that leave his survival in question. Ironically, it is through helping Miss Edna and Rodney through this as they help him with his own school and emotional troubles that he finds that he has lost a big chunk of his family, but his family has also grown with Lili's and his foster families.

The novel is rich with emotion as well as the motif of peace and war. This takes on the form of the literal with Jenkin's plot, but it is also emotional as Lonnie confronts his troubled past.

In some ways, I thought the form of the letters worked really well for the story since it allowed the reader to hear Lonnie's voice through the first person perspective. At the same time, the story can progress in a jolty format as things occur between the letters and the audience gets access in the form of a flashback as Lonnie brings Lili up to speed. As a result, the scenes being described are not presented as fully as they might have been in a regular narrative form.

I thought the tale to be incredibly moving. Lonnie and his loved ones are well developed and realistic characters who are presented in the raw, with all the good and the bad open for the reader to see. This is a wonderful sequel to the original.

I would suggest that readers read Locomotion first. While this tale stands alone, the constant allusions to events from the first book, particularly the fire, may be somewhat confusing since they are never fully explained in this book. That makes sense since Lonnie would not have to explain those events to his younger sister, but it would help those new to his story.