Guest Book Review by Caroline Eagly Cummings

Moon Over Manifest

by Clare Vanderpool

Review by Caroline Eagly Cummings

Have you ever wondered about your family's past? Well so does Abilene Tucker in the historical fiction book Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool.

Abilene Tucker feels abandoned by her father. Ever since Abilene got a bad cut on her knee her father Gideon has never been the same. For the summer he sends her to live with his friend in Manifest, Kansas, the town he grew up in. While she is there she stumbles across hidden mementos in the floorboard of the house she is living in. One of them is about a person called the Rattler. So Abilene and her new friends Lettie and Ruthanne go on an adventure, and on the way Abilene finds out about the secret history of Manifest.

I think an important theme in this book is secrets because once Abilene finds out the secret of why her father abandoned her she understands him better. Also, there are a lot of secrets in this book that Abilene finds out. I don't know for sure why the author wrote this book but maybe she was thinking that if you learn about your parents as a kid, you might understand them better as an adult. The book affected me because it made me kind of wish I could solve a mystery too, like Abilene.

I made two connections from the book. When people in the book started dying from influenza, it reminded me of a book called Fever 1793 by Laurie Anderson. In Fever 1793 thousands of people die in Philadelphia because of the Yellow Fever Epidemic. Also in the book there is a part about war, which reminds me of the wars going on today.

If you like historical fiction with a touch of mystery and sadness, this is the book for you. If you like this book you would also like Belle Prater's Boy by Ruth White, and Fever 1793. On a scale of one to ten I would rate this book a 9 1/2. This book is definitely a very good book.