Good Graces
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
To this day, my sister insists it was nothing more than the unrelenting heat that drove us to do what we did that summer, but that’s just Troo yanking my chain the way she always has. Deep down, she knows as well as I do that it wasn’t anything as mundane as the weather. It was the hand of the Almighty that shoved us off the straight and narrow path…
Whistling in the Dark—a national bestseller—captivated readers with the story of ten-year-old Sally O’Malley and her sister, Troo, during Milwaukee’s summer of 1959. Now it’s one year later, and Sally, who made a deathbed promise to her daddy to keep Troo safe, is having a hard time honoring her vow. Her sister is growing increasingly rebellious amid a string of home burglaries, the escape from reform school of a nemesis, and the mysterious disappearance of an orphan—events that have the entire neighborhood on edge. And in that tense, hot summer, Sally will have to ground her flights of imagination, and barter her waning innocence, in order to sort the truths from the lies to protect her sister and herself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kagen revisits the tumultuous lives of the O'Malley sisters in this spot-on sequel to her bestselling debut, Whistling in the Dark. In the sweltering summer heat of 1960 Milwaukee, life is almost back to normal for the 11-year-old Sally and her 10-year-old sister, Troo, after the events of the previous novel, and their widowed mother is now dating Sally's biological father, Dave Rasmussen, a detective. Though narrator Sally is staying out of trouble, Troo is stealing from the five-and-dime and talking dirty with boys, activities that earn her some time spent under the tutelage of Father Mickey, the new pastor at church. Meanwhile, burglaries have been occurring in the O'Malleys' neighborhood, and children have been winding up dead or missing. With their mother occupied with plans to remarry, Troo and Sally hatch a plan to catch the person responsible for the mayhem, and while the culprit isn't exactly surprising, the repercussions of the girls' ill-advised plan certainly are. Kagen does a remarkable job of balancing the goofiness of being an 11-year-old with the sinister plot elements, creating a suspenseful yarn that still retains an air of genuine innocence. Readers who enjoyed the first book are in for a treat.
