Pawns
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Teddi is determined to protect the elderly neighbor who took her in after she lost her parents in this fast-paced mystery from Edgar Award–winning author Willo Davis Roberts.
Teddi has recently been orphaned and she now lives with her kindly, older next door neighbor, Mamie. The times they share and the safety Teddi feels are precious. Then trouble appears in the form of Dora, Mamie’s daughter-in-law. Not only did Mamie not know that Dora was expecting a baby, she didn’t even know that her recently dead son had been married. Something seems out of sync and Teddi is determined to find out why.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Left all alone after her mother's death from cancer and her father's subsequent suicide, 14-year-old Teddi is happy to have found a home with her grandmotherly next-door neighbor, Mamie, who is herself recovering from her son Ricky's recent death in a plane crash. So Teddi is understandably shaken when young and very pregnant Dora shows up on Mamie's doorstep, claiming to be Ricky's wife, and proceeds to move in. Teddi is immediately wary-and then feels guilty for it. But with the help of her new friend Jason, 16, who has moved into Teddi's old house, she sees that her suspicions of Dora are well-founded. How can she expose Dora as an impostor without making herself look bad or, worse yet, crushing Mamie? With a neat fillip, Roberts (Twisted Summer) shakes the dust off a well-worn formula and turns the reader's assumptions inside out. The sensitive exploration of Teddi's feelings of grief and abandonment, moreover, considerably deepens the story's impact. Ages 10-14.
