If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch

So you hear the stories on the news about people living in the woods in tent-and-tarp homes, keeping their children in isolation, and often acting as crazy as possible.  You know that you always want to hear more when those stories come on.  What did they eat?  How did they survive the winter?  Why didn't the kids try to leave?  Enter If You Find Me.  What a great find!  This story is completely believable.  Often, authors want these stories to be sensational and overdone.  But Ms. Murdoch did a fabulous job of having a balance:  the mom is only half-crazy, the kids aren't Tarzan, and they aren't afraid of running water.  I bought Carey as a possibly real person, but her little sister was even more believable.  Character development and the IV drip of back story throughout kept me interested from beginning to end.  Definitely a book I looked forward to sitting down to read.  4 out of 5 violins for this one.  A very well-done story.