Moon Over Manifest, by Clare Vanderpool, is the story of a young twelve year old, Abilene, who is sent to live with her father's friend in Manifest, a small lazy town in Kansas.  She feels abandoned by the father she loves and is at loss for why he would do this.  She only knows that her father had changed after her sickness, when she had an accident and her leg became infected.  So, now, alone, in Manifest, the town where her father considers home, Abilene is trying to sort our her father's past and his identity and her own destiny.  Through the course of a summer, she discovers Manifest's history, her father's history, and her own place in Manifest's destiny.

A Newberry Award Winner for 2011, Moon Over Manifest is, in my opinion, a simply wonderful book, but I would not recommend it for everyone, because its narrative is sophisticated and complex with three threads which the author skillfully weaves to reveal a narrative which is a colorful depiction of life in small town Kansas.  This book is a book for a good reader, probably a girl, and for someone around 6th or 7th grade because the main character is young, but the scope of the story is big and the narrative complex.