Dream With Little Angels

Read Dream With Little Angels Storyline:

In 1975, thirteen-year-old Ruby Mae Vickers disappears in Alvin, Alabama. Leah Teal, new detective of Alvin, is assigned to the case. After three months, Ruby Mae finally turns up dead beneath a willow beside a swamp. Twelve years later, another little girl goes missing. Then another. Leah is sure these incidents are connected to the one she failed to solve a dozen years ago. The job of finding them again falls to Leah. She's not prepared for the memories it drags up. Then Leah's own daughter joins the list of missing girls. Told from the point of view of Leah's eleven-year-old son Abe, this is a tense and moving story of one woman's search for the truth and justice as she struggles against a past that won't let her go.ReviewSet in fictional Alvin, Ala., in 1987, Canadian author Hiebert's first novel courts comparison to the classic To Kill a Mockingbird, with its similar themes of justice and racism and its cast of characters--essentially Mockingbird's key players with the sexes reversed. But the book manages to soar as a moving achievement in its own right. Tensions are already rife in the Teal household as headstrong 14-year-old Carry discovers boys, ditches 11-year-old brother Abe (the narrator), and constantly battles equally determined mom Leah Teal, a widowed police officer. Then 14-year-old Mary Ann Dailey disappears on her way home from school. Leah plunges into the investigation--as well as resurgent guilt over her failure in 1975 to find the kidnapper of another girl, who eventually turned up under a willow with her throat slit. Abe--precocious in some ways but still childish enough to enjoy rock-balancing competitions with his best friend, Dewey--struggles to make sense of the dark forces dividing his town, as well as the mysterious ways the wider world works. In Hiebert's sure hands, psychological insight and restrained lyricism combine to create a coming-of-age tale as devastating as it is indelible. Agent: Adrienne Rosado, Nancy Yost Literary Associates. (July) --Publishers Weekly About the AuthorMICHAEL HIEBERT is a critically acclaimed, award-winning writer of novels and short stories. His work has been published worldwide and has received many awards. He lives in British Columbia, Canada.