With a Name like Love

Tess Hilmo

- 3.9 • 13 Ratings

- $11.99

- $11.99

One of School Library Journal's Best Fiction Books of 2011

When Ollie's daddy, the Reverend Everlasting Love, pulls their travel trailer into Binder to lead a three-day revival, Ollie knows that this town will be like all the others they visit— it is exactly the kind of nothing Ollie has come to expect. But on their first day in town, Ollie meets Jimmy Koppel, whose mother is in jail for murdering his father. Jimmy insists that his mother is innocent, and Ollie believes him. Still, even if Ollie convinces her daddy to stay in town, how can two kids free a grown woman who has signed a confession? Ollie's longing for a friend and her daddy's penchant for searching out lost souls prove to be a formidable force in this tiny town where everyone seems bent on judging and jailing without a trial.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AUG 1, 2011

Olivene "Ollie" Love is tired of life on the road with her mother and four younger sisters, as they follow her father, a traveling preacher, from one dirt-poor town to another in the southern U.S. in 1957. She'd like to attend school, and, perhaps, make a friend. When the Loves set up their tent in Binder, Ark., 13-year-old Ollie finds another reason to stay put: Jimmy Koppel, a local boy whose mother, Virginia, has been jailed after confessing to the murder of Jimmy's no-account father, a mean drunk. Ollie's gut instinct is that Virginia is innocent, but Jimmy can't help to exonerate her. "You got a phone book?" he asks. "That'd be your list of suspects." As a detective, Ollie fumbles repeatedly, but her persistent attempts to find out what happened to Henry Koppel keep the plot clipping along. Debut novelist Hilmo creates a few truly despicable villains to balance out the goodness of the Love family. Fans of Ruth White's books will find a similarly affectionate portrait of a close-knit family of modest means, struggling to do good in the world and right by each other. Ages 10 14.

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