Shadowed Summer by Saundra Mitchell

Summary:
Nothing ever happened in Ondine, Louisiana, not even the summer Elijah Landry disappeared.

His mother knew he ascended to heaven, the police believed he ran away, and his girlfriend thought he was murdered.

Decades later, certain she saw his ghost in the town cemetery, fourteen-year-old Iris Rhame is determined to find out the truth behind "The Incident With the Landry Boy."

Enlisting the help of her best friend Collette, and forced to endure the company of Collette's latest crush, Ben, Iris spends a summer digging into the past and stirring old ghosts, in search of a boy she never knew.

What she doesn't realize is that in a town as small as Ondine, every secret is a family secret.

My Review: From the minute I sat down with Shadowed Summer, it felt like one of those books I wasn't supposed to read in junior high and high school. "Deliciously athrill", Anne Shirley would've called it. It's a quick book, but it's packed with suspense and fear--and, best of all, plot. There's a deep story here, beyond the leading man ghost and the trouble he causes. No doubt Shadowed Summer will be a good first foray into sociology for young fiction reader, on a different (metaphysical) plane than the The Outsiders, but with similarities.

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