Dream With Little Angels

Dream With Little Angels by Michael Hiebert

Fourteen-year-old Mary Ann Dailey is missing. This can't be happening again.

Not in a small Southern town like Alvin, Alabama where everyone knows everybody's business. Twelve years ago Ruby Mae Vickers' lifeless body was discovered under a willow tree after weeks of searching through dense forests and murky swamp waters where the gators roam and wait.....

Police detective Leah Teal was assigned to that case back then and still bears the guilt of being unable to save an innocent child's life. Now a widow, she struggles to raise daughter Carry, and son, Abe. A daughter coming to terms with womanhood, a son wise beyond his years.  Eerily similar, another child, Tiffany Michelle Yates, disappears, and Leah feels not only an urgency to find her, but a terrifying realization that her own children may be in danger. Suspects abound. That elusive man next door who stays up all night while jolting, horrific sounds come out of his closed garage. The trusted family friend who finds a body, and suddenly faces scrutiny from even those who once respected him. As Leah feels the pressing importance to stop the insanity that encompasses her hometown, she must face her own resentments and fears.

This novel is short and simple, narrated by the voice of a sensitive, innocent boy who has the uncanny ability to help his courageous  mother uncover the truth.  Reminiscent of languid summer days sipping sweet iced tea on an old porch swing, the story takes the reader back to life in the Deep South in the late 1980s. Little do these townspeople know of the danger lurking in the shadows.  This book profiles small town bureaucracy, subtle racial discrimination, and the realization that children sometimes are the greatest teachers of all.

If only we would listen.