Tin Angel

(ages 13 - 17)  The picturesque Raven's mountain lodge has been in Ronnie's family for generations, allowing Ronnie and her sister to grow up surrounded by nature. But with fewer and fewer tourists coming to the lodge each summer, their father is forced to look for investors, and is killed in an accident on a business trip. The situation leaves Ronnie's mother with no choice but to sell the lodge to Louis Moss – a man Ronnie blames when her idyllic life is turned upside down.

Uprooted from their home in the mountains, the family struggles to get by in a dingy apartment, where Ronnie's fragile mother quickly succumbs to depression and alcoholism. The one bright spot in Ronnie's life is Lee, an outsider like herself. Ronnie offers Lee safe haven at her family's former lodge, but a chance meeting with Louis Moss at the Raven's ends in disaster. The lodge burns to the ground, with Moss inside. Ronnie is the police's only suspect, and as the dramatic court case unfolds, some portray her as a monster who killed a generous man, while others see her as a minor whose rights were violated by detectives.

This riveting novel, set in 1969, was selected for the Quill & Quire "Best Books of the Year" list.