Remarkably controlled for a first novel, this literary thriller from a Pushcart nominee for short fiction tells of a malignant secret that comes back to haunt the denizens of a backwoods Maine logging community that was once the site of a WWII labor camp for German POWs. In her never-ending struggle to nurse her alcoholic brother Leon back to sobriety, narrator Libby Pelletier, the 61-year-old proprietor of a local country store and cafe, brings him home from the VA hospital in Augusta. Coincidental to Leon's homecoming, Libby, whose deceased father once ran the local logging operation for a giant paper company, is visited by a German on a pilgrimage to clarify the puzzling circumstances of his brother's death following his escape from the POW camp in March 1945. At the time, both Libby and her brother were teenagers working with her father's crew. After Libby receives foreboding phone calls from an anonymous man asking to speak to her brother, Leon is found dead; shortly thereafter, Libby is warned against making further inquiries into the young POW's death. Tension increases and the mystery deepens as the determined Libby, thwarted by coverups and menaced by insidious forces, stumbles down one blind alley after another as she searches for the truth behind the two deaths. Shuttling deftly between past and present, driven by undercurrents of latent energy, this novel marks White as a talented and energetic writer. U.K, translation rights: Sobel, Weber. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Few Americans know that nearly 400,000 German prisoners of war were detained in American POW camps during World War II. But Libby Pelletier knows. She, her father, and her brother worked in such a camp. Decades later, Libby, a confirmed old maid who runs a roadside cafe in rural Maine, finally manages to bring her brother Leon, a recovering alcoholic, home from the VA hospital. But shortly thereafter, Leon receives a mysterious phone call and, hours later, is found dead. Libby is convinced Leon was killed, but she can't prove it. Then a German named Wolfgang Kallick turns up, asking questions about the disappearance of his brother from the POW camp years earlier. When Libby tries to help him, she gets threatening phone calls, but she persists and finally uncovers a tragic secret. White's debut is both a subtle and cunning morality tale and a powerful character study. In brilliantly understated prose, White captures perfectly the insularity and claustrophobia of a small New England town, the gruff eccentricity of its inhabitants, the brusque pride of a lonely spinster, and the moral tragedy of war. This dazzling first novel deserves a place in all collections. --Emily Melton