Tension builds as the questions pile up, though the clues do not keep pace with the gaping concerns that readers are forced to grapple with. Their relationship is quickly complicated by a fire on the farm that results in the death of a girl with an uncanny physical resemblance to Margot-and whose existence her grandmother refuses to explain.

Despite ominous foreshadowing, Margot still longs to find in her stoic grandmother, Vera, the love and connection that have been withheld from her. She finds the grandmother her mother never wanted her to know living on the family homestead in an economically depressed town where the Nielsen name seems to be shrouded in a cloud of suspicion that inspires trepidation among locals. They have no connections to any family that Margot is aware of, but when a clue about their family history surfaces, Margot follows it. Margot Nielsen has lived her whole life under the thumb of her emotionally distant, manipulative mother and her strange set of rules. It's also clear that Voigt has, with her usual careful crafting, built toward this moment with every line of a complex novel.Ī 17-year-old Nebraska girl’s desperate search for her roots takes her down a path more twisted than she could have imagined. And at the conclusion, it's clear that though James' and Sammy's search for a father to follow was always bound to fail, each has in the other a close friend and advisor with complementary talents. At the climax, there's enough action to reward the patient. Close friends of the Tillermans-and there are many-will be engrossed even in the slow-moving and introspective parts of this long story. In the end, each realizes that 'people never exactly duplicate one another.' Though they recognize and fear in themselves the qualities of their charming, conscienceless con-man father, they are not doomed to repeat them as faults, and may even share them as virtues.

Meanwhile, James has listened to Sammy's advice to just be himself, and Sammy has become the one more deeply involved in the quest for a father-or his own identity. Frank Verriker's trail leads them to his third-grade teacher, who adored him in spite of his mischief a high-school principal who expelled him a seedy Baltimore dockside bar where the name Verriker evokes such anger that they escape the ensuing brawl only after both are injured. They know nothing of their father except that he never married their mother, leaving her to cope alone with four children. James, 15, a thinker who does so well in school that he dismisses himself as a dork, is the one who wants to know Sammy, a doer, is willing to help, although as a seventh grader with no self-image problems he doesn't see the point. (Dicey's Song-Newbery Medal, 1983-plus four other books, more or less related), Voigt chronicles the spring Dicey's two brothers seek news of their father. Continuing the story of the Tillermans of Crisfield, Md.

Ruthless Queen by Eva Chance