Moon Over Manifest

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Clare Vanderpool

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Vanderpool, Clare.

   Moon over Manifest / Clare Vanderpool. — 1st ed.

      p. cm.

   Summary: Twelve-year-old Abilene Tucker is the daughter of a drifter who, in the summer of 1936, sends her to stay with an old friend in Manifest, Kansas, where he grew up, and where she hopes to find out some things about his past.

   eISBN: 978-0-375-89616-3 [1. Secrets—Fiction. 2. Fathers—Fiction. 3. Depressions—1929—Fiction. 4. Kansas—Fiction.]

I. Title.

   PZ7.P28393Mo 2010

   [Fic]—dc22

                                                          2009040042

Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

v3.1

To Mother and Daddy,

for loving a good story, and a good laugh,

and for giving me a good life

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Characters

Contents

Santa Fe Railway

Path to Perdition

Shady’s Place

First Morning

Sacred Heart of the Holy Redeemer Elementary School

Fort Treeconderoga

Main Street, Manifest

Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor

Triple Toe Creek

A Bargain Is Struck

Likely Suspects

Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor

The Art of Distraction

Frog Hunting

Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor

The Victory Quilt

Under the Stars

Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor

Elixir of Life

Dead or Alive

Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor

No-Man’s-Land

One Short, One Long

Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor

The Walls Go Up

Ode to the Rattler

Drawing Straws

Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor

Distribution

A Dying Breath

Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor

Day of Reckoning

The Jungle

Remember When

Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor

Homecoming

Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor

St. Dizier

The Shadow of Death

The Shed

The Diviner

Beginnings, Middles, and Ends

The Rattler

Author’s Note

Sources and Suggestions for Further Reading

Acknowledgments

About the Author

CHARACTERS

Manifest townspeople of 1918

SHADY HOWARD: saloon owner and bootlegger

JINX: con artist extraordinaire

NED GILLEN: Manifest High School track star

HATTIE MAE HARPER: up-and-coming journalist for the Manifest Herald

THE HUNGARIAN WOMAN: owner and operator of Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor

SISTER REDEMPTA: nun, not a universal

IVAN DEVORE: postmaster

VELMA T. HARKRADER: chemistry teacher and maker of home Remedies

MR. UNDERHILL: undertaker

HADLEY GILLEN: Ned’s father and owner of the hardware store

EUDORA LARKIN: president of the Daughters of the American Revolution (Manifest chapter)

PEARL ANN LARKIN: daughter of Mrs. Larkin, and Ned’s girl

ARTHUR DEVLIN: mine owner

LESTER BURTON: pit boss

FINN: Jinx’s uncle

Additional townspeople and their countries of origin

DONAL MACGREGOR: Scotland

CALLISTO MATENOPOULOS: Greece

CASIMIR AND ETTA (AND LITTLE EVA) CYBULSKIS: Poland

OLAF AND GRETA AKKERSON: Norway

MAMA SANTONI: Italy

HERMANN KEUFER: Germany

NIKOLAI YEZIERSKA: Russia

Manifest townspeople of 1936

ABILENE TUCKER: new girl in town

GIDEON TUCKER: Abilene’s father

LETTIE AND RUTHANNE: friends of Abilene

PASTOR SHADY HOWARD: still a little shady

HATTIE MAE MACKE: still writing “Hattie Mae’s News Auxiliary”

IVAN DEVORE: still postmaster

VELMA T.: still the chemistry teacher

SISTER REDEMPTA: still a nun

MISS SADIE: still a diviner

MR. UNDERHILL: still the undertaker

MR. COOPER: the barber

MRS. DAWKINS: owner of Dawkins Drug and Dime

MRS. EVANS: woman who sits on her porch and stares

Santa Fe Railway

SOUTHEAST KANSAS MAY 27, 1936

The movement of the train rocked me like a lullaby. I closed my eyes to the dusty countryside and imagined the sign I knew only from stories. The one just outside of town with big blue letters: MANIFEST: A TOWN WITH A RICH PAST AND A BRIGHT FUTURE.

I thought about my daddy, Gideon Tucker. He does his best talking in stories, but in recent weeks, those had become few and far between. So on the occasion when he’d say to me, “Abilene, did I ever tell you ’bout the time …?” I’d get all quiet and listen real hard. Mostly he’d tell stories about Manifest, the town where he’d lived once upon a time.