Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The protagonist in Moon Over Manifest is a 12-year-old girl who feels abandoned by her father when he sends her to spend the summer in the town where he grew up—Manifest, Kansas. Abilene Tucker’s life prior to that summer is not the typical life of an adolescent girl, not even for the 1930’s. Her ‘home’ is in the trains that take her and her father, Gideon, from town to town where he works odd railway jobs. It’s after Abilene is injured on one of these train rides (and subsequently falls ill) that she sees a change in Gideon, and Abilene wonders if she can find the answer to his behavior by discovering who Gideon really is from the people of Manifest.
There are a wide range of characters in this novel—each unique in his/her own way—who aid Abilene on her quest (from her newfound friends, Ruthanne and Lettie who set out to help Abilene uncover the mystery of the Rattler; to Shady Howard, the man who took care of Abilene’s father when he was a boy), but it’s Miss Sadie, the town diviner, who assists Abilene the most in her quest by reciting the story of the two young boys who changed the town of Manifest. Along with Sadie’s stories are the letters Abilene finds from one of these boys, Ned, to the other, Jinx—letters that give insight into the true depth of their friendship. And when Abilene finally discovers that Jinx is Gideon, she understands the reasoning behind her father’s decision to send her away.
Moon Over Manifest takes place in the year 1936 and covers a wide range of social issues pertaining to that time period—prohibition and racism the most notable—but at its core, the story is about friendship and the importance of accepting others. And it’s not just through Abilene’s journey that we come to understand this, but also through Miss Sadie’s story and Ned’s letters, giving readers not just the perspective of a 12-year-old girl, but that of a teenage boy and an adult as well.
Although I found the reading tiresome at times because of Vanderpool’s choice to include three different voices—Abilene, Miss Sadie and Ned—I enjoyed the story, especially when I stopped trying to read it as an adult. I do feel that the inclusion of Hattie Mae’s newspaper clippings was unnecessary, especially when they simply repeated information already given in Miss Sadie’s stories. However, Vanderpool’s decision to add the clippings might also be a way to keep young readers from getting confused—there are a plethora of characters in this book (which may also be why Vanderpool included a list of characters in the beginning).
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