Jenny Wingfield's The Homecoming of Samuel Lake
I can't figure out why this book isn't being super buzzed about, b/c it is damn excellent. Maybe Once Upon a River is cornering the market on grim near-historical tales? (Though this is not nearly as grim for most of the time.) Anyway, this is the story of what happens in 1950s Arkansas when a preacher isn't assigned a church, and his family goes to live with his mother-in-law and all her complicated relatives (great characters, all), and what happens when his daughter Swan (yes, one of our main characters is named Swan Lake) befriends a troubled neighbor boy. Now, this book wasn't perfect--the villain was perhaps over the top (he abuses his family, horses, and kills kittens for fun) but was absolutely terrifying nonetheless (Wingfield really captures his family's fear). And parts of it are just dreadful to read--I cried several times, though to be fair, one of those times I cried from happiness. Any book that makes me cry from happiness gets an automatic A.
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