'Cold in Summer'   

[OCT. 15, 2003]  ^"Cold in Summer," by Tracy Barrett, Henry Holt and Company, 203 pages, ages 10 and up

Review by Louella Moreland

The characters in Tracy Barrett's new novel, "Cold in Summer," give us a fresh perspective on the people from her native Tennessee. Life is a little slower, people a little friendlier, populations a little smaller... but no barefoot hillbillies who run around with shotguns.

Her leading character, Ariadne, believes her life is ruined when her college professor mother takes a visiting teaching post at a Tennessee college. Ariadne desperately misses her best friend, Sarah, and is worried about starting school in a small town where all the kids have known each other their whole lives. She is certain the school will not be equipped with the Internet or a modern science lab like her school back home.

Barrett begins her novel in the last few days before school begins. Ariadne is picnicking with her family at the manmade lake near their new home. Cedar Point Lake was created after the war, when the dam was built to generate electricity for the region. Ariadne learns that a small town lies under the lake, and she develops a curiosity to learn more about the people who lived "in the hollow" before the waters covered their property.

As she explores the woods that surround the lake, she meets a girl dressed in outdated clothes who seems able to disappear into the bushes much too quickly. When Ariadne begins to question the girls from town about this new friend, no one seems to know a May Butler.

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May, of course, is a ghost. She once lived in the hollow with her family but now wanders the woods around the lake helping young people who need her friendship in some way. However, her friendship with Ariadne takes a different course. This time it is May who is asking for help and Ariadne who must solve the riddle of May's disappearance.

By piecing together clues that May has left with other residents of the small community, Ariadne believes she can find May's skeleton and finally put her to rest. However, by helping May, Ariadne also begins to help herself. She comes to understand that this new community can be a good place. She learns she does not have to forsake her old friendships when making new ones.

This is a very well-written ghost story for young readers. The characters are believable: parents who are caring but a little preoccupied with jobs and moving; a little brother who is a pain in the neck but is also someone who can be counted on in time of need; friends who do not always know how to reach out with true emotions. The ghost is not too spooky or mystical. As readers, we cannot help but like the rather sad but resourceful May. The use of the supernatural in the story flows seamlessly in and out of the plot.

Readers will close this book with a sense of leaving behind a group a people who could be good friends. Cedar Point Lake becomes a place we would like to visit on vacation. What a great read for the pre-Halloween season!

For more spine-chilling adventures, visit us at the Lincoln Public Library, 725 Pekin St.

[Louella Moreland, youth services librarian,
Lincoln Public Library District]