Book excerpt: It is 1956, and thirteeen-year-old Sister must raise her three siblings on her own, as her mother, Marnie, has a new boyfriend who isn't interested in kids. Taking charge of her life, Sister befriends a kindly neighbor named Willa, who appears to be everything a mother should be. But when a respected and powerful man in town notices that Sister is blossoming -- unsupervised -- into quite a young woman, trouble starts to brew. Willa soon steps in to intervene, and Sister thinks she may have found salvation. But within the pages of Like a Sister, things are never what they seem. Depicting a vulnerable, heartbreaking, and richly Southern world, Like a Sister allows readers to gaze through the eyes of a young whom they will not soon forget.