If our heroine, Shannon's story were told today .... wow, it would have progressed very differently. No cell phones, no email, no computers, no way to track people's activities, no social media to instantly look up people and find out, hey, that face doesn't go with that name!
Shannon, age 14, is living with her aunts and not happy about it. Especially when suddenly her father has stopped writing. She misses their regular weekend camping trips, but apparently her fussy aunt persuaded her father that he wasn't raising her to be a proper lady. When Shannon discovers that her aunt has been keeping her father's letters from her, and preventing her letters from being mailed to her father, she begins a series of questionable decisions.
After Shannon discovers that her father plans on getting married, she decides to check out Jane, the woman who will soon be her stepmother. A series of helpful events and coincidences allow Shannon to sneak away from home, and using a false name go to work at the summer camp where Jane is working. Problems arise when a spoiled rich girl from the neighborhood shows up, using Shannon's name to hide out from her guardian and make trouble. The situation grows grim before everything is straightened out and all the lies are confessed. So many places along the way where Shannon could have told the truth, confronted people with their lies, and prevented trouble. But she didn't.
This was quite an adventure and a little frightening for an eight-year-old reading the book for the first time. As an adult ... I wanted to take most of the characters and shake some sense into them! How perspectives change with the years. Still, it kept me reading, and that's the mark of a well-told story.
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