Light from a Distant Star

This powerful story of innocence and betrayal is told in the endearingly wise voice of thirteen-year-old Nellie Peck. It is early summer, and her father’s business is failing. Her mother must go back to work, and her half sister has launched a troubling search for her birth father. Forced to take care of her shy younger brother, Nellie is determined to make him—and herself—toughen up. Three strangers enter Nellie’s protected life: the brutish Max Devaney, the thieving Bucky Saltonstall, and Dolly Bedelia, a young stripper living behind the Pecks’ house who becomes the titillating focus of Nellie’s eavesdropping. Nellie is proud of her infallible lie detector until violence erupts and she is silenced by fear. The truth as she believes it is unthinkable, and with all eyes on her in the courtroom, she is compromised by moral confusion. No one will listen, and a man’s life hangs in the balance.