The Rattled Bones

Gr 9 Up—Maine teen Rilla Brae's summer between high school and college is chronicled in this absorbing paranormal journey of self-discovery. The book opens with a flashback as six-year-old Rilla clings to her grandmother while she watches her mother attempt suicide. The narrative then leaps to the present when Rilla's loving home life is shattered by her father's death. Filled with grief and loss, Rilla tries to keep her late father's lobster business afloat as she struggles with the decision to leave her Gram alone and go away to college in the fall. In addition, her boyfriend Reed has become controlling, pressuring Rilla to forgo college and start a life with him. Under intense emotional stress, Rilla begins to fear for her own sanity as she hears a siren's song inviting her into the water and sees the spirit of a girl on nearby Malaga Island. While searching for the mysterious girl, Rilla meets Sam, a student on Malaga undertaking an archaeological internship. Sam is looking for information about a group of the island's inhabitants who were removed from Malaga in a mystery-shrouded scandal long ago. In her search to uncover the truth about the girl, Rilla learns the story of her family and her future path. She briefly speculates that paranormal forces may have caused her mother's mental illness, which is never fully resolved.