This is a wonderful story told partly from the perspective of Abilene Tucker, a thirteen year old girl just arriving in Manifest, Kansas during the Great Depression. This novel flashes between summer day adventures of Abilene Tucker and her two newly made friends Lettie and Ruthanne during 1936 and the lives of the Manifest townfolk in 1918. The novel is told in a variety of formats, including first person narrative, news paper clippings, third person omnipresent storytelling, and letters written by one character to another. Once the story picks up, it is full of mystery, suspense, humor, and drama. This great work of historical fiction will keep students attention right through to the end of the book. I chose to listen to this book as an audiobook, and really enjoyed the narrators voices that she gave each character, making it easy to follow and fun to listen to. However if you are reading this novel the publisher has chosen to give each perspective a different font which makes the text easy to follow as well.
Use in the classroom : This novel would fit in greatly with lessons on both the Great Depression and World War I. Without knocking you over the head with facts this novel does a great job at "showing" the reader what it was like to live in both in the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression, in a small town in 1918, and in the trenches of World War I.
