Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool

Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool is the Newbery award book of 2011 about a young girl named Abilene who lived in Kansas during the great Depression.  But the book is less about the Depression or history, and more about a young girl who is living in a strange place, without the comforting presence of her father.  Abilene misses her dad and looks for signs of him in the town where he grew up.  The story line jumps back and forth between Abilene's experiences meeting new friends and her search for a mysterious ghost-like character called the "Rattler", and the story of the people who lived during the town's past when her father was just a boy.