Camp Tapawingo is a camp in Maine that Abra Stone leaves early after learning that her great-grandmother, Concetta Reynolds, has cancer. Its significance in the account is brief but pivotal: Abra’s stay is cut short by family illness, and her return begins a period of travel between her divorced parents’ homes.

Setting and Abra’s Departure

Abra is at Camp Tapawingo when she learns that Concetta has cancer. Crying, she phones her mother, Lucy Stone, and says she wants to come home. The account gives no further description of the camp or the circumstances of Abra’s stay; instead, the call makes the news from home the turning point in her time there.

After the Camp

Following her early return, Abra spends the last two weeks of August and the first week of September with Lucy at Concetta’s condo on Marlborough Street in Boston. Concetta has recovered well from hip surgery, but doctors have also discovered pancreatic cancer; at ninety-seven, she declines chemotherapy and other treatment and arranges round-the-clock care rather than asking Lucy to tend to her for six months.

Place in Abra’s Family Routine

Abra’s stay with her mother is temporary. With school scheduled to begin on September ninth at Anniston Middle School, and her father, David Stone, spending his sabbatical year at home writing a book, Abra settles into a weekday-and-weekend pattern: weekdays with David and weekends in Boston with Lucy and Concetta. The contrast between the camp departure and this new routine makes Camp Tapawingo the threshold between a stay away from home and a family period shaped by illness and divided living arrangements.