Zoe Rising

This glowing story of a girl who leaves her body and travels back through time to save her mother is a worthy sequel to the Edgar Allan Poe Award winner Stonewords. Many teens know the feeling of being captive in their bodies, wanting to burst out and fly away to fix things that went wrong a long time ago. Fourteen-year-old Zoe can actually do it: ""Without moving I turned around inside my body, fully, again and again. My arms left the shell of my arms... I was like a little paper umbrella twirling."" Her ""ghostwalking"" frightens her, but she is compelled to use her power to solve a mystery in her estranged mother's past. The luminescent language and harrowing plot of loss and retrieval swirls Zoe from summer camp back through time to her mother's childhood in an island home. There, Zoe must summon all her ghostly abilities to protect her mother-child from tragedy. Unlike many molecularly-enhanced heroes, Zoe keeps getting yanked out of the dramatic past by present interruptions--loud cabinmates, canoe trips and curfew (in the only plot dangler, Zoe's friend Jedidiah, let in on her secret, is incredibly willing to ""never again speak of what happened at camp""). The late author's moving depiction of Zoe's weightless epiphany in the fourth dimension is well worth readers' time in the here and now. Ages 9-up. (June)