The year is 1936 and Abilene Tucker can’t understand why she has been sent to Manifest, Kansas, for the summer while her dad, her only family, works on the railroad in Iowa. She has lived her whole life with her father, traveling the rails and never staying long in any one place. Manifest was the town Gideon Tucker left years before but he has never been back. She finds friends in Lettie and Ruthanne and a mystery in a box of old letters and keepsakes and a summer long “spy hunt” ensues. As she works off a debt for Miss Sadie she learns about the past. It is through the stories Miss Sadie tells of the town and its inhabitants 18 years earlier and a regular newspaper column from the same time period that Abilene comes to understand her father. The characters are well defined and the dialog believable. The two stories, past and present, are neatly intertwined. Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool is an excellent slice of life of mid-America. Recipient of the 2011 Newbery Award. For grades 5-8; adults may enjoy it as well.
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