For Sparrow Dalton, life in swampy, small-town Beulah has never been easy. Her mama recently passed away; she never knew her daddy; and sometimes, the town buzzes with rumors "she must be the daughter of the swamp itself." To make matters worse, Sparrow also sees spirits. One of them, the Boy, a cherub-faced trickster, has skulked by her side for as long as she can remember. Sparrow's never told a soul about the Boy, but if she wants to make her mama a spirit like him, she'll require help, and she finds that d more town outcasts Maeve and Johnny Casto, as well as traveling child fortune-teller Elena. But the Boy needs help, too, and the gang soon stumbles into a century's worth of scathing secrets. With gorgeous prose, an eerie historical undercurrent, and a lush, larger-than-life Florida backdrop, Piontek not only delivers a taut exploration of fractured small-town dynamics, but an entrancing, compulsively readable mystery. Sensitive readers with a yen for all things supernatural will hungrily sleuth their way through this atmospheric debut.

After her beloved mother dies, outcast Sparrow lives with her cold aunt and a ghost boy near the Everglades. Grieving Sparrow makes friends with other outsiders, solves the mystery of her ghost friend, and eventually moves forward. Sparrow's growing sense of belonging gives the story heart, while the atmospheric Florida marsh and small-town class prejudices (both historical and present-day) sharpen its setting.

The difference between wanting and needing can be as slight as the breath off a midnight swamp or as vast as a torrent of floodwater.Piontek weaves a heartbreaking tale of loss infused with the nearly suffocating weight of longing, need, and absence. The death of Mama leaves young Sparrow in the care of tall, thin, and emotionally brittle Auntie Geraldine. Sparrow has never known her father, and in her small Florida town where her home sat pressed against the Everglades, rumor was the dark-haired girl was the spawn of the swamp itself. Long as Mama lived, Sparrow accepted her outsider status. With Mama gone, Sparrow finds herself engulfed in a grief as stifling as summer humidity. Sparrow's only companion is the ghostly Boy who has been part of her life as long as she can remember, until at last she begins to make some living friends. Piontek spins a gothic ghost tale, delivering it in a lyrical narrative that threatens to overwhelm readers as sure as a blanket of Florida summer heat. Sparrow and her friends are white, not unusual in Beulah, Florida, whose social stratifications include unspoken segregation.Even though the ending comes too fast and too tidily after so much soul-stirring grief, the story features some lovely writing, and it's full of characters who linger like apparitions. (Fantasy. 10-14)