Augusta Cotton

In her engaging second novel, Erhart ( Unusual Company ) traces the coming-of-age of two 11-year-old girls who live on opposite sides of the river that bisects their hometown. On her side, Augusta inhabits a conventional home with her parents, the town doctor and his wife. On the poorer side, Helen lives with her mother; her father is dead, her brother in a sanatorium. Narrator Augusta, hovering at the brink of adolescence, becomes infatuated with classmate Helen as well as with Helen's mother. As the novel opens, Helen falls ill with lupus, and the disease's drama and mystery as it attacks and retreats, its distressing effects on Helen and Augusta, form the story's nucleus. The novel follows the two girls, so closely bonded they practically dream each other's dreams, through a year, focusing on their time in class, their long walks home from school, Augusta's visits to Helen's sickbed and the eventual unraveling of Helen's family secrets. Erhart movingly portrays her protagonists contending with more of life than they can grasp, capturing Augusta and Helen at that most disturbing time, the difficult transit out of childhood. (Sept.)