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A review by rbreade
Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool
Works in two different time periods, 1918 and 1936. The main story, in 1936, is narrated in the first person by 12-year-old Abilene Tucker, who has been sent by her father, Gideon, to stay in his hometown of Manifest, Kansas for the summer, after he's laid off from his railroad job. In trying to figure out why she's been sent away, and then why there seems to be no trace of Gideon left in town, Abilene discovers a secret cache of letters and mementos that put her on the trail of a mystery from 1918.
When she meets the mysterious Miss Sadie, diviner, the events of 1918 are gradually revealed in Miss Sadie's third- person account of the town, the mine, the immigrants who made up the citizenry, and the con artist drifter who comes to town and says, the boy known as Jinx.
All this is woven together as Abilene learns that her father was the boy, Jinx, that he saved the town with a con that allowed the town to keep a valuable vein of ore out of the rich mine owner's hands, that he left because he felt responsible for his best friend Ned Gillen's, enrollment in the Army and death in World War I, and that Ned was the son of Miss Sadie, who had to give him up on coming to America and by the time she was able to return, four years later, he had been happily adopted by the Gillens, so she stayed in town just to be near her son.
When she meets the mysterious Miss Sadie, diviner, the events of 1918 are gradually revealed in Miss Sadie's third- person account of the town, the mine, the immigrants who made up the citizenry, and the con artist drifter who comes to town and says, the boy known as Jinx.
All this is woven together as Abilene learns that her father was the boy, Jinx, that he saved the town with a con that allowed the town to keep a valuable vein of ore out of the rich mine owner's hands, that he left because he felt responsible for his best friend Ned Gillen's, enrollment in the Army and death in World War I, and that Ned was the son of Miss Sadie, who had to give him up on coming to America and by the time she was able to return, four years later, he had been happily adopted by the Gillens, so she stayed in town just to be near her son.