Starred Review It's 1941 and Chicago is full of ghosts. Ghosts reliving their traumatic deaths; ghosts seeking revenge; ghosts enjoying the lakeshore; and ghosts that quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) observe the living. One such living girl is Frankie, who's stuck in an orphanage with her sister, Toni, because their father can't afford (or doesn't want) to take care of them. The ghost narrating Printz winner Ruby's (Bone Gap, 2015) enchanting latest watches Frankie make friends, resent her father, fear the cruelty of the nuns, enjoy secret sweet moments with a boy, and try to keep her sister out of trouble. Frankie's gradual coming of age, with all its joy and heartbreak, is the core of the story, but told alongside the many stories of the ghosts on the margins, who experience joy and heartbreak of their own, it takes on ever more depth. Ruby's delicate, powerful storytelling 's as if each word carries deliberate weight aws out potent connections among women living in different eras, and the places where their stories overlap captivatingly demonstrate the varied ways anger, love, strength, vengeance, and forgiveness appear. If that sounds esoteric, never fear: Ruby's well-wrought, multifaceted characters, both living and dead, are front and center of this moving novel. But the constellation collectively shaped by those characters' stories reveals profound, bewitching truths about the vast, sometimes cruel, sometimes loving, possibilities of human nature. Subtle and stunning.

This evocative tale entwines the lives of two young women-one living, one dead-in Chicago on the cusp of WWII. In 1941, 14-year-old promising artist Frankie Mazza; her younger sister, Toni; and their older brother, Vito, are -half-orphans--children left at orphanages by parents struggling financially. The nuns can be strict, even injurious, and the sisters are further abandoned when their father remarries and moves to Colorado, taking only Vito and his new wife-s children along. Narrator Pearl Brownlow, a ghost who died when she was not much older than Frankie, haunts Chicago-s streets and the orphanage, reflecting on Frankie-s life and her own. As Pearl slowly comes to terms with the shocking events that preceded her death, she watches Frankie fall in love and experience devastating loss, and witnesses the sisters- eventual return to their father and his horrible new family. Printz winner Ruby (Bone Gap) creates a dreamlike rendering of Pearl-s afterlife that contrasts with Frankie-s stark, historically detailed circumstances. Though a slow unspooling may frustrate some, the women-s resonant journeys, marked by desire and betrayal, thoughtfully illuminate the deep harm that women and girls suffer at the hands of a patriarchal society as well as the importance of living fully. Ages 14-up. (Oct.)