In 1943, Allie Bert Tucker, but please skip the “Allie,” knows that it is her fault when her mother and baby sister die in a difficult childbirth in the mountains of North Carolina. Bert’s father confirms her conclusion by sending her away to help out his sister who is “in a family way” across the state in Riverton. In All the Little Hopes, Leah Weiss returns to the Appalachian setting she used in If the Creek Don’t Rise to spin another tale.
When her aunt winds up in a mental asylum with no word from her father, Bert finds herself taken in by the Brown family that already has two boys and five girls, one an albino orphan who needed a home and was voted into the family unanimously. She and Lucy, who is a week younger than she is, are alternate narrators in this World War II setting. Seeing themselves as Nancy Drew counterparts, Lucy and Bert search out the mysterious disappearance of one man, with distractions from the German prisoner of war camp and their farm production of beeswax for the war effort. They consult the community mystic and the Ouija board, but instead of successful detective work, more men go missing.
The girls’ journey puts them into a quandary as they consider what is right and wrong. Lucy tries to balance her own grandmother’s German heritage with the community attitudes toward the war and the prisoners in their town, and when Bert returns to the mountains for her father’s funeral, she must decide where she really belongs.
Though the protagonists are middle schoolers, the novel fits the age groups that would have enjoyed the younger protagonists in To Kill a Mockingbird. Leah Weiss nails her Appalachian setting again for this book, making it a vital part of her story and even includes a couple of recipes from the region in the back matter. I read an advance reading copy of this book, furnished by Net Galley, that can be pre-ordered before it goes on sale in July.