Sal finally accepts that Momma is dead when she reaches Lewiston and sees the wreckage from the bus accident and visits Momma’s grave. They visit every site that Momma did on her trip, which allows Sal to “walk two moons” in Momma’s shoes and develop empathy and a greater understanding of who her mother was. Sal relates Phoebe’s story and the story of her budding romance with Ben while on a cross-country road trip with Gram and Gramps.

She gains strength from spending time in natural settings and from her Native American heritage, and many of her memories and experiences center on trees, rivers, wild berries, and mountains. Winterbottom went, Sal also falls in love with a classmate named Ben. Sal is a high-spirited country girl deeply troubled by the loss of her mother. As Sal and Phoebe try to figure out where Mrs. But watching Phoebe grieve, Sal reaches some important conclusions, most notably that Momma wasn’t trying to hurt Sal by leaving, and that her leaving probably had nothing to do with Sal. Winterbottom, goes missing, Sal feels as though she’s watching the Winterbottoms go through the same process that she and Dad did after Momma left. Sal slowly begins to recover once she befriends Phoebe Winterbottom in Euclid.

This traumatized Sal, and to cope with her grief, she refuses to believe Momma is actually dead. Sal watched Momma fall into a deep depression before finally leaving for Lewiston without saying goodbye. But this all changed when Momma’s second baby was stillborn. Sal was very close with Momma when she was a child and even describes herself as Momma’s “mirror.” This didn’t bother Sal-to her, life was perfect. Over the course of the novel, Sal comes of age as she starts to recover from her grief over Momma’s death, and as she starts to separate her identity from Momma’s. Sal was born and raised on a farm in Bybanks, Kentucky, the only child of Momma and Dad-but when Momma suddenly leaves for Lewiston, Idaho and dies in a bus accident near the end of the trip, Dad moves Sal to Euclid, Ohio with him. Sal is the 13-year-old protagonist of the novel.

Gramps walk two moons