When I started this book, I was hooked by the voice and story of the main character, Abilene. Gideon, Abilene's father, is living on the road and moving from place to place to find work, and he decides this isn't an appropriate life for a young girl. As the book begins, Abilene arrives in Manifest, Kansas to live with a preacher friend from her father's past. Abilene and two girls who become her friends spend the summer working their way through clues that help them to understand the Manifest of their parents and ancestors. While the story's setting is during the Great Depression, much of the story's action occurs approximately 20 years earlier-- at a time when the U.S. was fighting in the first World War and when millions of immigrants were entering the country through Ellis and Angel Islands. Through the stories Abilene hears from Manifest's citizens, what she reads from the old newspapers she borrows from the newspaper office, and letters and trinkets she finds in a box hidden in her bedroom floorboard, Abilene begins to piece together Manifest's story, and how she is connected to that story. 
 Clare Vanderpool does a wonderful job of weaving history through Abilene's story so that the reader is not only drawn into Abilene's situation, feelings, and struggles, but also begins to understand the dynamics of these important periods in U. S. History. I was impressed by how well this book fits a need for historical fiction appropriate for 4th and 5th graders that deals specifically with the time period around WWI and the era of immigration, without being specifically about those topics. 
 Most of all, I was blown away by the ending of this book-- which I did NOT see coming. This is one of those books that I will always remember as being one in which the ending MAKES the story. I was sitting at 4 stars, until the last 50 or 60 pages. This is one of my new favorites!