A young girl whose mother dies in a tragic car accident searches for a surrogate mom in Mary Kay Abbott's luminous novel Pearl of Baxter Grove. Young Casey is only 11-years-old, but she's crumbling under the weight of losing her mother in a car accident on Christmas Eve. Her workaholic, overstressed dad has no time for her, and so she ventures out into nearby bucolic Baxter Grove to find some support. Prospects look bleak when all Casey can find is a kid-hating shop owner and an African American newcomer who greets Casey with a shotgun But Casey soon learns that what you see isn't always...