Point of View

The point of view of the novel is first person and third person. The first person sections of the novel are in the voice of Abilene Tucker, a twelve-year-old girl sent to Manifest, Kansas by her father to stay with an old friend. Abilene discovers a box of keepsakes in the room where she is staying and turns them into an investigation into the past of Manifest. As Abilene searches for a spy known as the Rattler and for information about her father, she is told the story of two boys in the letters contained in the box of keepsakes. This story is told to Abilene by Miss Sadie and is told in a third person omniscient point of view that excludes any impression of an authorial voice to the point in which Miss Sadie calls herself the Hungarian woman throughout the story.

The point of...