The Doll Funeral

How desperately do the dead wish to interact with the living? This is a strong underlying theme in Hamer’s second novel (after The Girl in the Red Coat). Ruby can see dead people, an ability she’s been peripherally aware of since she was very young. On her 13th birthday, Ruby learns she was adopted; she confides this to someone she refers to as Shadow, an ever-present ghostlike companion who has tried to protect her all her life. Ruby, energized by the desire to find her birth parents, finally fights back against her abusive adoptive father. The consequences lead to her taking up with an odd group of siblings living hand-to-mouth in their family’s rundown mansion while their parents are away in India on a spiritual quest. As Ruby’s history becomes clearer, Hamer—with evocative and vivid prose—explores the depths to which a mother will go to connect with her child, while Ruby discovers her family’s secrets and learns a true family can be the people we choose to live with, not just the family into which we are born. (Aug.)