On New Year's Day, Alice Davis goes for a run. Her first ever. It's painful and embarrassing, but so was getting denied by the only college she cares about. Alice knows she has to stop sitting around and complaining to her best friend, Jenni, and her pet rat, Walter, about what a loser she is. But what she doesn't know is that by taking those first steps out the door, she is setting off down a road filled with new challenges-including vicious side stitches, chafing in unmentionable places, and race-paced first love-and strengthening herself to endure when the going suddenly gets tougher than she ever imagined, in On the Road to Find Out by Rachel Toor.

Rachel Toor is the author of three previous books. She was an admissions officer at Duke University, a high school cross country coach, and a teacher of SAT prep classes. A senior writer at Running Times magazine, she teaches at Eastern Washington University in Spokane.