Yesternight

This work of historical fiction set in the 1920s centers on Alice Lind, who became a school psychologist to understand her own childhood nightmares and sporadic violent behavior. When Alice is sent to the wild coast of Oregon to help young Janie, a seven-year-old who believes she was once an adult woman who drowned, Alice's own past haunts her, and she becomes convinced that reincarnation is real. There are too many coincidences for her to accept that Janie is just a genius mathematician. A brief dalliance with Janie's divorced father complicates matters—is Alice really a "loose" woman with no morals, like her ex-boyfriends say? Or is she a professional woman ahead of her time? Teens who have read Winters's Morris Award finalist In the Shadow of Blackbirds will find the hints of the paranormal in this novel familiar. At times, Alice seems more like a teenager in modern times than an adult woman in the 1920s, but her investigation into the two incidents of possible reincarnation will fascinate readers. The Oregon, Nebraska, and Kansas rural settings are enthralling, as are the problems Alice encounters as a psychologist in a male-dominated field.