Shenandoah Carmody is determined to track her mother, who has been missing for almost a year. Problem is, Shenny is only 11 and forbidden to leave the house by her father, who drinks too much and has gotten much stricter, even cruel. She also has to care for her twin, Woody, who's so badly traumatized by their mother's disappearance that she hasn't spoken since and runs off every chance she gets. The voice of Shenny is the best part of this Southern gothic, which is set in 1969. She's optimistic, determined, devious, precocious to the point of implausibility, and wrong about practically everything. VERDICT Author Kagen also narrates and her drawl slathers on the charm. The reading, along with a few real surprises, makes this a good bet.-John Hiett, Iowa City P.L. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Set during the summer of '69 in rural Virginia, Kagen's stellar third novel, her first in hardcover, chronicles the dramatic changes in the lives of 11-year-old Shenny Carmody and her twin sister, Woody, nearly a year after their mother's disappearance. Woody hasn't spoken since, and their father, a renowned judge, spends most of his nights in a drunken stupor at Lilyfield, their Rockbridge County estate, often turning violent and cruel toward his two daughters. Shenny, adventurous and bright, takes it upon herself to locate their beloved Mama and discover why she left them. In her quest for the truth, Shenny learns many heart-wrenching lessons, not least among them that first impressions "can be dead wrong." Kagen (Whistling in the Dark) not only delivers a spellbinding story but also takes a deep look into the mores, values, and shams of a small Southern community in an era of change. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

In Kagen's hardcover debut (Land of a Hundred Wonders, 2008), a young Virginia girl puzzles over her mother's disappearance. It is 1969, shortly before the moon landing and one year since Shenny's mother Evie, an educated, liberal Yankee whom Shenny's father married against his family's wishes, disappeared. Shenny's twin sister Woodythe girls are 11 when the story openshas stopped speaking and their father Walter, a respected judge from the influential Carmody family, has become a raving drunk who locks the girls in the root cellar overnight when they disobey his orders to stay home in order to avoid communication with anyone outside the family. Tomboy Shenny and increasingly fragile Woody disobey frequently, visiting the friends Evie cultivated behind her husband's back as their marriage soured. The girls are especially fond of Beezy, an elderly black woman who was once a Carmody servant, and her handsome, blue-eyed son Sam, who used to be a police detective in Illinois before he came home to run a gas station. Since no body or clues have been found, the local sheriff investigating Evie's disappearance seems to have hit a dead end. Shenny starts her own investigation with no better luck. Her acuity is questionable. Although she claims to be surprised by her father's transformation from loving to abusive father, she was aware of the troubles in her parents' marriage which involved Walter's attempts to bully Evie the same way his father and brother bully all the women in their lives. The Carmody men are cartoonishly evilrich, misogynistic, predatory and racistwhile Shenny's Carmody grandmother is a Catholic religious fanatic. Although Kagen makes references to cultural touchstones like Vietnam and the moon landing, her version of 1969 Virginia veers from anachronistically innocent to anachronistically backward. And Shenny's determined pluck seems both too innocently young and too precocious to coalesce into a believable 12-year-old. Shenny starts her narration by warning that first impressions "can be dead wrong," but there's never a question as to who's good or bad in her story. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.