Hope Was Here
Joan Bauer
 A teenager named Hope Yancey lives with her aunt, Addie, in Brooklyn, where Addie works as a chef and Hope works as a waitress at "The Blue Box Diner." Hope lives with her aunt because her mother, Deena, (who named her Tulip Yancey, which she disliked so she officially changed her name to Hope when she was twelve) did not consider herself to be a suitable parent. Hope has no idea who her father is and feels that she cannot be whole until she meets him. She has a scrapbook filled with people who she thinks would be her father. Besides the scrapbook, she also has "memory books" from every place that she's been, given that she's moved a lot. Her goal is to be able to pull out all of her memory books when she finally meets her father and give him the play-by-play of her life. When the restaurant Hope and her aunt work at closes down because the owner, Gleason Beal, stole all of the restaurant's money, Addie and Hope decide to move to Mulhoney, a small city in southern Wisconsin, where they will work at a small-town diner. Before leaving her home, Hope writes "Hope was here" on one of the boards on the window. Writing her name somewhere noticeable but not obtrusive is her way of saying goodbye to a place. Hope's new boss, G.T. (Gabriel Thomas) Stoop, is a kind-hearted man, but he has leukemia which keeps him off of his feet at the diner. G.T. decided to run for mayor against the current, very corrupt mayor Eli Millstone. Millstone lets the Real Fresh Dairy company not pay taxes, and in exchange the workers at this company must support his campaign. The current mayor supports a huge company that causes a lot of problems for the townspeople, such as cracking roads and keeping people up at night using illegal routes to the highway. but his political power causes few to run against him. Meanwhile, Addie has been changing the menu at the diner, much to G.T.'s amusement. G.T. then shows interest in dating Addie, who responds positively but brusquely. Encouraged by G.T.'s success, the line cook Eddie Braverman (AKA Braverman), who works at the diner to help support his ill mother, decides to ask Hope out, who initially refuses. Hope is wary of dating Braverman because Deena has always told her to never date the cook. However, after a test date, Hope and Braverman become a couple. Hope also befriends the two other waitresses, Flo and Lou Ellen, and a Russian immigrant, Yuri, who works as a bus boy at the diner. Lou Ellen has a young daughter, Anastasia, who is ill and refuses to eat. G.T. sets up a nursery in his office and lets Lou Ellen bring her daughter to work. Anastasia reminds Hope of herself when she was a baby, so Hope and Braverman decide to help Lou Ellen by watching Anastasia. They finally succeed in getting her to drink from a bottle. Braverman,Hope and a group of students from the area high school form a Students for Stoop organization to support G.T.'s campaign. Because of Braverman's participation, he is attacked and beaten by a group of Millstone's supporters. During his campaign, G.T. discovers that his leukemia is in remission, but Millstone's campaign spreads a rumor that G.T.'s cancer has spread to his brain. The teens, Addie and G.T., along with Brenda, the deputy sheriff, all attempt to spread the truth about G.T., but they are not able to convince the townspeople in time, and G.T. loses the election. A few weeks later, Hope and Braverman are going over the list of voters, and they discover that Millstone rigged the election. G.T. is named the new mayor of Mulhoney and begins many reform programs. G.T. marries Addie and officially adopts Hope. About two years later, G.T.'s leukemia returns and he dies after Hope tells him that she thinks of him as her real father, the one that she was always looking for. Hope and Braverman leave for college, since he can now pay for his tuition thanks to reforms that G.T. started.