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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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
Contents
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
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
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.
