Thirteen-year-old Katie McCabe acts out, in part, to defy her hometown’s expectation that she be a beacon of good behavior as the daughter of their sheriff, Ron McCabe. She complains to her father that “I feel like I’m under a microscope… everybody watches everything I do.” Ron, who is widowed, needs more help than is available locally to guide Katie through a dangerously impulsive adolescence. When she accidentally sets fire to a neighbor’s livestock shed while practicing how to smoke, he sends her hundreds of miles away to live on the farm where he grew up. His eldest brother, Charlie, who Katie has never met, will be her no-nonsense guardian. Katie suffers feelings of abandonment yet assumes that her stay will be temporary. But soon she learns the deeper and devastating reason for her dad’s decision. Misbehavior becomes the flip side of her despair.
What makes Liana Gardner’s RAIN FALLING ON EMBERS novel so engaging is the inventive ways that Katie confronts social and emotional challenges as well as physical peril in her new community. Sometimes her choices lead her to the brink of disaster, especially those inspired by her ever-escalating conflict with high school bully Denton Dunn, Jr. Spoiled by his father’s wealth and power, Denton acts like he can do as he pleases without facing consequences for actions such as causing Katie to nearly drown. But Katie’s story has its light moments, such as when she gets a mud bath while cleaning Uncle Charlie’s pigsty. It’s also difficult not to laugh when she rigs Denton, Jr.’s high school locker for a physically harmless yet embarrassing explosion of shaving cream to pay him back for a false accusation of academic cheating.
Characterization, pace, and plotting are all strong in the novel but its setting could be more defined. Aside from not naming either of Katie’s communities, Gardner doesn’t identify where they are located. The story’s period also is unclear, although it is likely somewhere from the late 1970s to the early 1990s based on the lack of personal computer technology and societal expectations about girls’ dress and ambitions. The distraction of searching for clues about place and time may bother readers. But overall, this novel about early adolescent difficulties will keep kids reading and talking. And it does an admirable job of balancing heavy topics with a dash of humor and a big dose of adventure.
Author Liana Gardner has won many awards for her middle grade novels and titles for older teens and by the end of the emotional, action-packed RAIN FALLING ON EMBERS, readers may be inclined to binge-read the entire five book Katie McCabe series when it’s available.
~Alicia Rudnicki for IndieReader