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THE GHOSTS OF MERCY MANOR by Betty Ren Wright

THE GHOSTS OF MERCY MANOR

by Betty Ren Wright

Pub Date: Sept. 1st, 1993
ISBN: 0-590-43601-5
Publisher: Scholastic

Again, Wright deftly combines an old-fashioned ghost story with a modern family dilemma. Gwen Maxwell, 12, feels as though the bottom has fallen out of her life—for the second time. Five years ago, after her parents died in a car accident, she came to live with loving Great-aunt Mary in Winfield, Wisconsin. Now Aunt Mary has also died and, except for a much older brother whose concern for her welfare is little more than perfunctory, Gwen is alone again. Enter kindly Dena Mercy and her family, with plenty of room for a foster child at beautiful Mercy Manor. Inconveniently, Gwen's presence at the farm stirs up ghosts of Dena's past, jeopardizing Gwen's tenure with her newfound home. Purely for her own sense of self-esteem, Gwen takes on the lonely task of persuading her foster mother to acknowledge a long-ago family murder. Gwen succeeds; and despite the tumult wrought in the household, we know she'll be welcome to stay. A delightful juxtaposition of golden summer days and clammy haunted nights to warm and chill the reader. (Fiction. 8-12)