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Rory Dawn Hendrix, Rory D, lives in a trailer park near Reno, Nevada.  What it is like to grow up poor and in this desert area is described vividly. Reading this book provides a different view of the area than the usual tourist experience.  Rory D. doesn't know her father, her four brothers have moved away, she loses her mother and then her grandmother. At fifteen, she is on her own with only the guidance of the Girl Scout manual.  She has lived through molestation and its effect on her, has seen how the community where she lives supports their own, and has been ill-treated by the adults who are charged to protect her.  This book is disturbing yet also hopeful as Rofy D. walks away from her double-wide to start a new life.

This fantasy horror book was quick to read and kept my attention throughout.  While it was scary, it did not make me afraid to read it.
The story is based on a legend of Native Americans who used to live in Alaska.  One elderly man, Jimmy, who now lives in a nursing home in California remembers how to defeat the monster who was freed by archaeologists.  Jimmy needs to save a four-year-old boy from the Faceless One. He is helped in solving the mystery of how to defeat the Faceless One by his friend from the nursing home, the boys parents, and a New York City policeman. I became invested in the characters and even as I was near the end of the book wanted all of them to have a happy ending.  

This non-fiction book tells about the wealthy wealthy married couple Edith Minturn and Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, it is very readable and gives an excellent description of life at the turn of the century, the gilded age. I especially liked how many events of that time were related to life today.