A Stir of Bones

The book takes place in 1982 and centers around Susan Backstrom, her friends, a ghost and the house the ghost lives in. It succeeds on a variety of levels and is a thoroughly excellent novel.

Susan is pretty much the "perfect" girl, but a girl who has a father who is terribly physically abusive towards her mother and who holds the Susan in line by threatening to hurt her mother if Susan does anything he doesn't like. She has no privacy; he goes through things in her room, checks her hamper and even her fingernails. She has no freedom at all in her life until she finds out about a strange abandoned house.

She eventually goes to the house and meets the ghost of Nathan, a young boy who died in the house, and with him and her friends she begins to have somewhat of a more normal life, spending time in the house with her friends and finding out that she has an ability to be in tune with the house and its feelings, the house being alive in its own way.

There are problems, of course. She has to keep this a total secret from her father. A girl who many kids don't like spots her and her friends in the house and threatens to cause problems. She has the constant fear of her father finding out something and then taking it out physically on her mother.

It all makes for a very interesting book, one which demands direct sequels since Susan's problems with her father are not resolved by the end of the novel. As far as I know, though, no direct sequels were done.

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