Lone Star

It's fall 1944, and 10-year-old Jane Miller has moved from Chicago to Corpus Christi, Tex. A Jew and a ``Yank,'' Jane is further alienated from her classmates by her family's sudden poverty--the result of her indulgent father's having embezzled funds from the insurance company he works for. As Mr. Miller tries to repair the damage he's done to his family, Jane longs desperately to fit into her strange new environment. Her beloved Orthodox grandfather visits, but fails to console her: ``Friends are not as important as living a life of dedication,'' he declares. When Jane's new friend Sally invites her to help trim a Christmas tree, Jane is enchanted and wants a tree of her own. In her first novel, actress Barrie sets Jane's wrestling with her own identity against a sensitively and economically drawn backdrop of family conflict, all overshadowed by the gradual revelations of the atrocities Hitler has wreaked on European Jewry. Although the dialogue is occasionally stiff and a few characters are not fully evoked, Barrie's protagonists are original, and her story both memorable and moving. Ages 10-up. (Sept.)