A foster family deals with culture clashes after taking in a motherless girl whose militia-wannabe father has been jailed.

In the Appalachian corner of Ohio, 9-year-old Miriam Winslow’s mother dies in a car crash. Not long after, her father is arrested on tax nonpayment and weapons charges. The family’s trailer is seized, and Miriam must enter foster care (her older brother and sister live with others). Deanne and Rick Fletcher already have young children; though they can’t afford another baby, they have room for a foster child. They’d been hoping for an infant, but as Rick says, “If there’s an immediate need, we should help out. Right?” That’s what the Fletchers are like. Despite warnings about the Winslows, long known as “a ragged bunch by any standard…the kind with no ambition” or, to get to “the gist of the  matter: trashy,” the Fletchers aim for patient reasonableness. When Miriam’s angry, self-righteous older brother, Josh, threatens her new family, they will be further challenged to put their faith into action. Miller (To Boldly Go, 2013, etc.) employs deft characterization to make the Winslows and Fletchers three-dimensional. Deanne, recalling a childhood memory whose undercurrents she only now begins to grasp, wonders, “Do we ever know what’s really going on?” Rejecting simplistic stereotypes, from “trashy” to “homophobic,” Miller invites readers to probe beyond immediate impressions. She also takes a realistic view of limitations; when Deanne’s mother softens toward her gay brother, “You could tell these plans had come from arduous soul-searching. But it seemed a bit soon for applause. Indeed, no sooner did Mom’s eyes finally meet Deanne’s than her look hardened.” This realism is also evident in Miriam’s older sister Rachelle, a troubled girl who cuts herself. She doesn’t get better all at once; instead, she learns hope slowly, in glimpses: “But now, here came a new thought: if she wanted to, she could talk to Mrs. Fletcher about all that.” Josh’s slow burn is also well-handled; Miller does a fine job of showing just how his frustration builds and seeks a target.

A compassionate, thoughtful narrative about hard-won self-realizations.

A young woman held in police custody tells her life story to delay imprisonment in Miller’s novel.

Narrated with a noirish sensibility, the novel follows a 27-year-old woman named LaDene Faye Howell as she recounts the tale of how and why she’s currently in police custody. On August 12 she went on a crime spree with her second cousin, Bobby Frank, who had recently been paroled. Bobby’s section of the family tree is known to sprout criminals. Born and raised in small-town Devola, Ohio, LaDene grew up the youngest of three sisters with an elder brother who died fighting in Afghanistan. Although she emphasizes her seemingly quiet nature in comparison to her troublemaking sisters, over the course of the novel we learn that LaDene became pregnant at the age of 15 by Bernard O’Brien, a senior who’s considerably more well off than the working-class Howell family. LaDene is immediately sent to a hyper-religious boarding school called New Dawn Ministry to ride out the rest of her pregnancy. Most of the novel focuses on this pivotal time and reveals how she eventually hooked up with Bobby. LaDene’s narration is full of personality and flair. Miller has crafted a compelling cast of characters, from LaDene’s churchgoing family to her fellow pregnant classmates at New Dawn Ministry to the overbearing faculty who ruthlessly rule the school. Even the humorous description of the crimes she committed with Bobby is rendered in engaging detail. Overall, this is a slow-burning read that takes a while to heat up as LaDene recalls long stretches of her life. Eventually, however, the novel culminates in a riveting open-ended denouement that leaves LaDene’s fate up in the air.

Everyone from casual readers to the staunchest of mystery fans will find something to enjoy in this quick—and quick-witted—read.