In this final book in the series, the seventh graders of McQuarrie Middle School and their Star Wars-inspired Origami finger puppets go on a field trip to Washington, D.C., on what proves to be a very long trip full of shifting alliances, betrayals, carsickness, and sugar rushes.

In his first novel to follow the publication of his enormous success, The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck’s vision comes wonderfully to life in this imaginative and unsentimental chronicle of a bus traveling California’s back roads, transporting the lost and the lonely, the good and the greedy, the stupid and the scheming, the beautiful and the vicious away from their shattered dreams and, possibly, toward the promise of the future.

A little girl gets on a bus with her new red balloon, but when the balloon blows away, her friends and fellow passengers try to help her find it.

Having been recently widowed in her forties, shy Jane Redfern has finally plucked up the courage to head off on holiday by herself. Embarking on a ten-day coach trip to Germany, the last thing she anticipates is to meet someone new and fall in love. But gradually she finds herself drawn to her fellow passenger, Shropshire farmer Dave Falconer, who has also lost his partner. As Jane's shy English reserve begins to melt away in the stunning surroundings...