Shadow Baby

Eleven-year-old Clara is struggling to find the truth about her missing father and grandfather and her dead twin sister, but her mother refuses to talk. When Clara begins interviewing Georg Kominsky--her elderly neighbor--she finds that he is equally reticent about his own concealed history. Precocious and imaginative, Clara invents versions of Mr. Kominskys past, just as she invents lives for the people missing from her own shadowy history. Her journey of discovery is at the heart of this beautiful story about unlikely friendship and communion, about discovering what matters most in life, and about the search to find the missing pieces of ourselves.

"A fiesty little heroine who often seems equal parts Huck Finn, Eloise, and--well, maybe Shakespeare's Beatrice-to-be....At once witty, tender, funny, touching, and, by end, tragic in a way that perfectly brings all to a close, if never to an end. Bound for success, or else the world has gone mad." --Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"Suspenseful and moving." --The New York Times Book Review

"Perfectly constructed and beautifully written." --The Dallas News

Alison McGhee was awarded the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award for her first novel, Rainlight. Born and reared in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, she currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.