Falling from Grace

A steely yet sensitive teen comes of age in tiny Prohibition-era Prosper, Ark., in this often promising first novel. As the story begins, the narrator, 13-year-old Cassie, is waiting for her parents to discover that her older sister, Adra, has just run away; meantime, she has to go to Sunday school, where she gets punished by the teacher for her unorthodox response to a question. Exiled from class, she helps her older brother, Jake, dye the water in the baptistery blue--and spies her father kissing the preacher's glamorous wife. McNichols juggles many plot lines: Adra's boyfriend has killed himself for reasons that emerge slowly, if vaguely; Adra's disappearance prompts nasty gossip; Cassie finds a boyfriend in the almost impossibly honorable Jan, son of a Hungarian immigrant family, and she defies her neighbors' bigotry and xenophobia to stand by him. The cast battles tragedy and cruelty, including a senseless death from bootleg moonshine and a dramatic dodge of a Klan attack. Not all the characters are onstage long enough for the impact of their struggles or suffering to hit home with readers, and Cassie's sudden embrace of a nemesis at the end is unconvincing and gratuitous. For the most part, however, Cassie proves a keen observer of the thorny, sometimes oppressive intricacies of small-town life and of family dynamics everywhere. Ages 10-up. (Sept.)