Laura Resau

Laura Resau uses travel, family uncertainty, and cross-cultural friendship to shape the three-book Notebook series. The Indigo Notebook opens the sequence in Ecuador, where fifteen-year-old Zeeta and her itinerant mother Layla meet Wendell, an American boy seeking his birth family. The Jade Notebook closes it in coastal Oaxaca, Mexico, as Zeeta investigates her father's past and becomes involved with the community surrounding endangered sea turtles. Delacorte Press issued the opening volume during 2009; the concluding book followed in 2012. The Ruby Notebook connects them through a story set in France. Resau drew on time spent in Ecuador and on research in Mazunte, giving each setting an observed social and environmental texture. The books are teen travel adventures, but their continuing emotional question is whether Zeeta can reconcile her desire for stability with Layla's restless way of living. Across the two named titles, movement between countries becomes a means of examining adoption, belonging, family history, romance, and responsibility to place.