I highly enjoyed this. Once I got past the boring title and cover, I found this very enjoyable. Set in the Great Depression and WWI, Moon Over Manifest is educational on the lives of many people during the times. The main character, Abilene, is interesting and clever. I, personally, preferred the story being told by Miss Sadie. The transitions into Miss Sadie's stories were fluid, but he ones out of her stories were not quite as smooth. The story starts fairly slow, and I was originally reading this because my mom wanted me to. Once I got a fair ways into the story, however, I was reading it because I was interested in it. There is some violence, none of it especially graphic, however. At one point a man is stabbed, and another man blames it on a boy who gets knocked unconscious, and the boy goes through most of the story thinking he is the culprit. The same man who was the killer steps in a steel trap and falls backward, dyeing from a rock his head hits, but leaves his foot and boot behind. A main character dies at war, and many people die of the flu. Many important characters have to work in a mine which pays very little, and only in vouchers for the company store, which charges twice the regular cost. Finally, the members of the Ku Klux Klan burn a cross to warn some German miners having a meeting. I feel this story is best for strong readers eleven and up. While boys may like it, the main character is a girl, though the main characters in Miss Sadie's stories are boys.