Baking for Dave

Iris Heller runs away to compete in a national bake-off. In order to get there she will need to steal her mom s car, cross the east coast, and do the most terrifying thing of all-- interact with actual people! Iris has never been like other girls, but she s not about to start letting that get in the way. The first meltdown comes at the ferry. A doctor named Chris intervenes. He just so happens to be in the midst of his own crisis. He too has run away, unable to process the fact that he is a psychologist with depression. To him Iris is the sign he needs and he sets out to help her however he can. Meanwhile Iris's young mom Maisy (who works nights) wakes to realize what has happened. And by the time she does her daughter is already two states away. She quickly and frantically works with best friend Eric, to get her butt on the road and find her daughter. (Readers will probably see her as her sister. It is a surprise that will be revealed later.) To compensate for nervousness Iris has the habit of humming, beatboxing, and making musical contraptions out of items around her. It is this talent that gets captured at several road stops along the way which will lead to her inevitable "gone viral" glory. At a donut shop, Iris sings like an angel. At a coffee shop she plays a symphony using cups and the soda fountain. At a restaurant she builds a glorious musical fountain out of dishes and pans. At the screaming suggestion of Maisy, Chris and Iris are "waiting for her" at the first place they can sleep. They stop at a kitschy motel where rooms that look like Tiki cottages and Iris is recognized from the internet for the first time. Maisy, exhausted but determined catches up with them just in time to catch Iris melting down again. Staying in a place other than her own room is much harder for her than she could have ever imagined. Maisy could. She brings the girl all of her comfort items and sings her to sleep in a scene that captures just how intense the relationship between mother and daughter can be. Readers see Maisy has put her entire life aside to give Iris the life she deserves. Now the three are off. At another stop, Iris unites an entire Truck Stop in a revival-style sing along. It is becoming clear she is the kind of pure spirit who brings the best out of the world around her without knowing it. (Here Maisy meets a dead-ringer for the star of her favorite show. She will meet up with him again on a date that goes horribly wrong.) All lives converge at Happy World, the Disney-esque paradise where the bake-off takes place. Even though Maisy s dream date is a bust, she realizes the man of her dreams was never some guy from TV. Eric has been with her all along. Chris is reunited with the wife and dog he has left behind in hopes of saving them from his illness. Unbeknownst to him, his wife has been very aware of his struggles. And on all the days he thought she had left him to suffer alone, she was out training Sasquatch to be his therapy dog. Iris, whose life until this point has been one of isolation and misunderstanding finds out just how much the world loves her. Hundreds of VueClix fans and new friends from the road are at the contest cheering her on. So it doesn't matter how she does in the bake-off. She's already won."